We Shall Gather at the River

The Way of the River

2008-04-22T19:04:00.000-04:00

There’s a certain bend in the North River. . . If you’ve canoed the upper reaches, you’ve most likely been there, gliding softly along its curve, taking note of its well-trodden upland as you dip your paddle into its copper-colored waters. Perhaps you’ve stopped there -- or at least wished you had time to. You may have been struck by the quiet, taking note of how expertly the river folds in upon itself to mute out the continual thunder of the highway bridges that bracket this one-mile stretch.

This bend would seem no different from any other inland segment of the North River, but for a single outstanding feature. Picture a luxuriantly wild landscape, a field of green and golden marsh grass and a dense hardwood forest divided by a serpentine river that rises and falls with the ocean’s tides. The July sky is mostly clear, flecked with an occasional puff of cloud. Red-wing black birds flit from tree to tree; sometimes a hawk, or even an occasional eagle, passes overhead. Focus now on the tall, broad oak poised on the slope of the upland. Follow the arch of its strongest branch as it stretches over the stream. There, one third of the way out, a slender length of rope hangs over the water; observe how securely it has been bound to the tree, and how its tail is drawn into a large knot. A rope swing.

The summer after my first year of college, some friends and I developed a ritual of visiting the rope swing every day at high tide. We’d structure our days around the tides, manipulating our work schedules to accommodate what became a necessary, almost vital, activity. Each day, we’d crowd into a car and drive northwest into the next town, crossing over the river a few miles downstream of the swing. Upon arrival, we would hike down into the woods, tripping eagerly along the steep downhill path as we made our way to the river’s edge.

Although on earlier canoe and rafting trips I had become aware of the power of the North River, it was this first rope swing summer that I began to feel a deep connection to it. Swimming in the river became a daily baptism; I would emerge renewed from my salty bath, leaving behind the tension I’d carried with me through the day to dissolve in the river’s cool waters. By the end of the summer, I could anticipate the North’s rises and falls without the aid of a tide chart. I was sure that if I could tune out the clatter and drone of stress and ego and sit quietly in meditation, I would feel the river’s movements in my blood.

Reaching the small, well-trodden clearing where the swing tree stood, my friends and I would take off our shoes, set down our towels, and stand in a cluster around the rope swing tree. Silent for a few seconds -- somewhat excited and somewhat apprehensive -- we’d pay our respects to the natural world that had opened its doors and permitted us to join in its dance. Breathing in the sweet scent of the forest, we would thank the swing tree for withstanding the nails we had driven into its trunk to aid our anxious climbing. Then, raising our eyes to each other in wordless consensus, we’d begin.

The boys, more carefree and courageous, always went first. Ted would race up the tree to the fifth and highest rung. He’d quickly settle himself on the knot, grab the rope, spring out into the air, and howl with delight as he fell into the river. Derek was next: he would climb the tree more cautiously, pausing on the fourth rung and taking a deep breath before taking that final step up to the top. As soon as he had steadied himself up there, though, he would leap out into the air with the same wailing abandon as Ted, splashing with glee into the water below. And then it would be my turn.

The rope swing tree is a sturdy, seasoned oak. It stands on the root-thick bank, about three feet from the water, its top branches reaching far out over the river. The tree measures two and a half feet in diameter at its base, tapering to about ten inches at the place where you would hold on if you were to jump from the fourth rung. Most of its lower branches have been removed, some by the wind, but most in order to clear the path of the swinger. Stretching far up into the sky, fifty feet and more, the tree offers anyone who dares to climb into its uppermost limbs a spectacular view of the marsh and the woods and the old stone fences that dot the riverbank at odd intervals up and down stream. Years ago, the first rope swingers nailed twelve-inch lengths of two-by-four at regular intervals up its trunk; since then, the two bottom rungs have fallen off, but the rest remain -- some loose, some secure.

The first time I climbed the rope swing tree, I didn’t jump out. Reaching the first rung was relatively easy -- only a mildly uncomfortable stretch, like skipping two steps on a staircase. The second rung was a little more difficult: many of the nails that had once held it in place had rusted and broken. Two nails remained in the center, but they were bent and corroded. I could only pause there for a second, stepping only in the exact center, knowing that an uneven distribution of weight would tip the rung and drop me back on the ground. With increasing confidence, I moved quickly on up. Arriving safely on the third rung, I paused for a moment to look down and gauge how far up I had climbed. Ten feet, almost twice my height below me, was the North River, streaming over the rocks that pinched its path, leaving nothing behind but a gentle thread of wake.

It was, as I said, the first time I had climbed the rope swing tree. I hadn’t yet forged the connection with the river that I would carry with me when autumn winds chilled the air and ended the swinging season. I hadn’t learned to listen to the river, to mimic its movements, to allow tides of energy and emotion to pass over me like waves. I was still learning, learning that if you fought the waves you usually got a mouthful of water, if you worked against the current, rather than finding a way to allow its strength to help you, you only got tired. I knew the North had a message for me, but I could not make sense of it. Reflecting on the river’s determination to follow its course, to rise and fall in an endless cycle, taking obstacles in stride, I realized that it would make no move to protect me when I let go of the rope and plunged into its waters. Swinging out of the tree and letting go of the rope was scary enough, but I would also have the river’s current to contend with. I’d heard stories of even the strongest swimmers being overcome by its power.

Fear washed over me, exploding in my ankles and knees and forcing me to grasp hold of the tree to retain my balance. My heart began to race, my breathing grew faster: “I could drown. I could land on those rocks down there and break my neck.” I had never felt such debilitating fear; tears were streaming down my face as I stood trembling on the rung, both arms around the tree, unable to move. I knew that my friends were down there, shivering, waiting for their turns, waiting for me to jump, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do it -- I wasn’t ready. I knew that it wasn’t just fear of the jump or the current that was paralyzing me; there was something much more immediate that I had to find the strength to confront. I felt helpless -- I didn’t know what to do. I stared through the irregularly spaced green leaves, out across the river, across the marsh, searching the sky, the clouds, the horizon for an answer. Nothing.

“Hey, what’s going on up there?” My friends were getting impatient.

Their call startled me. I no longer wanted to try the rope swing. The spell broken, I started to descend the rungs. “Not today. I’m not swinging today.”

A few days later, I decided to try the rope swing again. Starting out, it seemed easier: I ascended the rungs more rapidly than before, pausing with each step, but only for a few seconds. I didn’t want to wait too long, afraid that any hesitation would give me time to reconsider. I stopped when I reached the fourth rung, eleven feet up. (Because of the length of the rope, jumping from a lower rung was difficult and unsafe. Although jumping from the fourth rung promised a smoother and less jarring ride than the fifth, it was considerably less thrilling. Still, it was a good place to start.) The river gushed and gurgled below me, whispering its sweet, eternal song. I breathed deeply, trying to stay calm, gathering strength from the bold spirit of the landscape before me.

I steadied myself on my perch, tucking the knotted rope between my thighs and reaching out to the nearest branch for balance. I curled my toes around the rung, grasping for any minute sense of security. “This is easy,” I thought. “I don’t know what got into me last time.” With my free hand, I clutched the rope with all my might -- it was really the weight of my body on the knot that would support me as I swung out over the water, but this grip would make me feel secure. I was ready to go. Or maybe not.

“Have you guys ever stopped to admire the view from up here?”

The tree seemed safe. Strong and settled, it would have supported me all day and night, had I decided to stay up there. I let go of the rope and the branch and embraced the tree, just as I had the time before. I put my ear to its rough textured bark and listened. I wanted to hear it tell me that I would be okay, that I was ready to make the jump, but it didn’t say a word.

This was the summer after my first year of college. I was eighteen, an adult, some would say, and terrified of what the future held for me. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to return to school in September. Living away from home for most of the past year had changed my relationships with my friends and family; the changes weren’t necessarily bad -- just different. College had turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined: not just the academics, but the combined effects of having to live in a new place, make new friends, and change from the way of life I had grown accustomed to while living with my parents. I didn’t know what I wanted to study, or whether I wanted to study at all. Should I take a semester off? What would I do? The summer was already half over, and I hadn’t given serious thought to any of it. Up there in the tree, I was confronting a fear that I had been avoiding for months. Was I ready to take the next step?

I looked to the river. Again, I saw it flowing gently but steadily out to sea, gliding around rocks or sometimes over them, sometimes moving them, carrying the reeds and twigs, the flotsam and jetsam and branches it had picked up on the way. By simply watching it, one could tell where the river had been. There was no way to know for sure where it was going, no way to know whether it would stay the same or change completely after it rounded the next bend. There was no way to know except to flow with it, to surrender to the river and allow it to carry you along. Following the way of the river was the only way to go.

Some time passed: it might have been a few seconds or a few hours, but I didn’t feel it go by. When I remembered where I was and why I was perched high in an oak tree, looking out across the river, my confidence was restored. Swinging out from this tree now seemed exciting -- an adventure -- not something I had to do, but something I had chosen. Quickly, I prepared myself for the jump. I put my ear back to the tree one last time, just in case it had any last-minute warnings . . . nothing. Safe or not, I had to try it.

I held my breath. Leaning back, I moved my weight off of the rung and onto the knot in the rope; there was no turning back now. It seemed like the entire world was stopped, hushed in anticipation.

Next thing I knew I was swinging through the air, flying, with an involuntary howl bursting forth from my lungs and throat. I felt so light, so free . . . And then I was letting go of the rope. Falling, falling, falling, and splash! into the river, down through the water, my feet pounding the river floor, my legs pushing me back up through the silty murk, reaching up, back to the light, the sky, the sun, gasping for breath, grinning. Alive.

My friends were cheering on the riverbank as I turned to face them. The salt in the water made it easy to stay afloat; I let the current propel me as I swam in toward shore. Hoisting myself up out of the river, I clambered onto the bank, heading straight for the swing tree, feeling not a sense of victory, but rather contentment, a quiet exhilaration for having taken that first step down a new path. I hadn’t answered any specific questions, but I had proven to myself that I was ready to face the challenges that lay ahead. I didn’t know what to expect from the future, but I looked forward to finding out what was waiting around the next bend. I knew that I should simply take on each obstacle as it presented itself, one step at a time.

And so up I climbed, to the fifth rung.

8 - Bibliographic Essay & Acknowledgments

2008-04-22T16:23:00.000-04:00

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

Local History
For Marshfield town history and information about development of the North River, I drew from a number of sources: Krusell and Bates’ Marshfield: A Town of Villages, Marshfield Hills, MA, 1990; Marshfield Tercentenary Committee’s Marshfield: The Autobiography of a Pilgrim Town, Marshfield, MA, 1940; Joseph Merritt’s Anecdotes of the North River and South Shore, Rockland, MA, 1928; Lysander S. Richards’ History of Marshfield, Plymouth, MA, 1901; and L. Vernon Briggs’ remarkably thorough History of Shipbuilding on North River, Boston, 1889. Also, to a lesser extent, Agnes Edwards’ The Old Coast Road from Boston to Plymouth, Boston, 1920.

Indian History
For archaeological and historical information pertaining to the native tribes of New England before European contact, I relied on Dean R. Snow’s Archaeology of New England, New York, 1980; and Neal Salisbury’s Manitou and Providence, New York, 1982.
For general information on the Wampanoag from the contact era onward, I employed a number of excellent sources: Salisbury’s Manitou and Providence; William Cronon’s Changes in the Land, New York, 1983; Catherine Marten’s “The Wampanoags in the Seventeenth Century” from Occasional Papers in Old Colony Studies, Fall River, MA 1970; William Simmons’ Spirit of the New England Tribes Hanover, NH, 1986; and Laurie Weinstein-Farson’s The Wampanoag, New York, 1989. Also, to a lesser extent, Frank G. Speck’s Territorial Subdivisions and Boundaries of the Wampanoag, Massachusett, and Nauset Indians, New York, 1928. Weinstein-Farson and Simmons also provided substantial information on the modern Wampanoag.
Lincoln Newton Kinnicut’s Indian Place Names in Plymouth, Middleborough, Lakeville and Carver: Plymouth County, MA, Worcester, MA 1909 provided me with the pre-European names of many of the rivers, lakes, towns, and other places I researched and wrote about.

Physiography, Geography, Weather, and Pollution
For physiographic and geographic information, especially on the ancient level, I found several books to be quite helpful: Irving B. Crosby’s Boston Through the Ages, Boston, 1928; Henry F. Howe’s Salt Rivers of the Massachusetts Shore, New York, 1951; Lincoln A. Dexter’s Maps of Early Massachusetts, Wilbraham, MA, 1979; Dean R. Snow’s Archaeology of New England, New York, 1980. Stone and Peper’s Late Wisconsinan Glaciation of New England, Dubuque, 1982; Harold L. Levin’s Contemporary Physical Geography, Philadelphia, 1986, and Press and Siever’s Earth, San Francisco, 1978 were all excellent general reference sources.
For more recent information of the physical features of the North River region, I relied on two studies: US Dept. of Agriculture’s North and South Rivers Basin, Plymouth County, MA, 1982; Harvard Graduate School of Design’s A Study of Trouant and Bartletts Islands, 1986.
Details regarding the Storm of 1898 came from a number of newspaper accounts. Almost an entire issue of Marshfield Mail (12/1/1898) was devoted to news of the storm. An anonymous letter reprinted in South Shore Mirror, (11/23/1967) provided a more personal perspective of the storm and the destruction it caused. Also, Willard DeLue’s “Readers Amplify the Humarock Story,” from Boston Daily Globe 6/25/54.
I found additional information on this and other storms in John Fish’s Unfinished Voyages, excerpted in North and South River Watershed Association’s River Watch, Summer 1990; Yankee Books’ New England’s Disastrous Weather, Camden, ME, 1990; and various issues of two newspapers, Marshfield Mariner and Marshfield Reporter .
For information regarding more recent river developments, I found NSRWA’s River Watch, (Spring 1990- March 1993) to be the best and most reliable source. Earlier newsletters, as well the NSRWA and North River Commission Papers, (both Norwell, MA) were also helpful.
As for pollution in the rivers, especially regarding the WPCP, two studies were essential: The BSC Group’s North River Water Quality Management Plan, Boston, 1987; and Metcalf and Eddy’s Draft Report to the Town of Scituate, Massachusetts on Supplemental Facilities Plan for Wastewater Management, Boston,1990. Numerous issues of Marshfield Mariner provided more general news about and reactions to pollution in the North and South Rivers.

Folklore, Interviews, Inspiration, and Other Information
A number of newspaper and magazine articles provided local color, humor, and a diverse stock of North River history and lore. These included Edward Rowe Snow’s “Death on the North River,” printed in Patriot Ledger 10/9/76; Judith Horstman’s “This New England: North River, Massachusetts,” printed in Yankee, May 1990; and a long series of articles entitled “As I Remember” by Walter E. Crossley, published in Marshfield Mariner, starting June 1, 1972.
I conducted three formal interviews for this project: I met with Aaron and Natalie Loomis on March 15, 1992; Peirce Fuller on March 16, and Carolyn Sones on March 17. Quite a few informal conversations with Dan Jones, Executive Director of NSRWA also provided colorful and valuable information about the rivers and the river community.
I must not leave out the more general river writings that were this project’s original sources of inspiration. Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, New York, 1974 sparked my interest in the genre of nature writing. Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, Toronto, 1981 reminded me of the spiritual qualities of a river. Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, New York, 1968; and Down the River, New York, 1982 prompted me to consider to what extent I was willing to go in order to protect the North and South Rivers. A number of other ‘river writings’ all played small but important roles in the planning, shaping, and writing of this project. This includes (but is not limited to) the following: David James Duncan’s The River Why, San Francisco, 1983; Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, Chicago, 1976; Grace Lee Nute’s The Voyageur, St. Paul, 1955; and Ann Zwinger’s Run, River, Run, Tucson, 1975.

Direct Quotations

Most of the pieces in this collection contained direct quotations, which I did not cite within each piece. Specific information as to these quotations is provided in the order they appear.
In the first piece, Introduction - Rivers of Living Water, I quoted the following sources: Loren Eiseley, from The Immense Journey (New York, 1957), p. 15; Pascal, as quoted in Edward Abbey’s Down the River (New York, 1982), p. 3; and Hermann Hesse, from Siddhartha (Toronto, 1981), pp. 101-2.
In the second piece, Voyageur, the quotations are: Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York, 1974), p.68; and Francis Higginson, as quoted in Cronon, Changes in the Land (New York, 1983), p. 52.
In the third piece, The Rippling of Waters the sources are as follows: Jim Harrison, from the poem “The Theory and Practice of Rivers,” from his collection The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems (Livingston, MT, 1989); Marshfield Tercentenary Committee’s Autobiography of a Pilgrim Town (Marshfield, MA, 1940), p. 158; Marshfield Mail (12/1/1898), p.1; from a letter reprinted in South Shore Mirror (11/23/1967), p.4; Henry David Thoreau, from Cape Cod (New York, 1987), p. 66; Barry Lopez, from Arctic Dreams (New York, 1986), p. 120; Henry David Thoreau, as quoted in Edward Abbey’s Down the River (New York, 1982), p. 3; and Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York, 1974), p. 13.
There were no direct quotations in the fourth piece. In the fifth, A Scenic and Protected River, the sources are as follows: Paul Hogan, as quoted in Marshfield Mariner (3/26/86); and Dan Jones, from NSRWA Papers (Norwell, MA).
In the sixth piece, Everything that Increases Me, I quoted: Raymond Carver, from his poem “Where Water Comes Together with Other Water” in Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (New York, 1986); Henry David Thoreau from Walden and Other Writings (Toronto, 1982), p.232; and Jim Harrison, from “Cabin Poem,” from the collection The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems (Livingston, MT, 1989).
In the final piece,We Shall Gather at the River, the sources are as follows: Robert Lowry “Shall We Gather at the River” from Fireside Book of Folk Songs , Margaret Bradford Boni, ed. (New York, 1947), p.297; John Smith, from “A Description of New England,” excerpted in The Heath Anthology of American Literature, V1 (Lexington, MA, 1990), pp. 157-158; William Bradford, from History of Plymouth Plantation, V2 (New York, 1968), pp. 151, 153; L. Vernon Briggs, from History of Shipbuilding on North River (Boston, 1889), p.1; and William Wood, from New England’s Prospect , Alden T. Vaughan, ed. (Amherst, MA, 1977), p. 36.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All of us are teachers; all of us are students. We come into each other’s lives so that we can teach and learn from one another. Together, we create an intricate web of shared lessons. Although I may claim credit for the researching and writing of this collection, I cannot say that everything expressed in these pieces came solely from me.

There is neither time nor space enough to name and thank every individual who has influenced this work. The lessons that shaped the thoughts expressed on these pages go back twenty-one years, and continue through today, into tomorrow. This brief section of acknowledgments serves only as a small gesture of thanks for what I have been given. To those who, through their wisdom, listening and advice, led me to consideration, insight, and understanding -- to those who, through their care, support and love, guided me through the major and minor troubles that I encountered along the path, I send out a thousand blessings. Named or unnamed, you have my deepest gratitude. This collection is the gift I offer in return for all you have given me.

Ventress Memorial Library, the Five College Libraries, the North and South Rivers Watershed Association (NSRWA), Derek Gentry, Alexandra Swan, Linda O’Callahan, and my friends and colleagues at Hampshire College all deserve special mention here.

Thanks to the folks at Mod 90, past and present, who through their support, caring, conversation, conflict, and good cooking provided the safe and comfortable environment I needed to be able to research, write, and edit these pieces.

Thanks to Peirce Fuller, Aaron and Natalie Loomis, and Carolyn Sones. Submitting to my novice interview skills, they shared memories and stories, and taught me more about the North and South Rivers than I could have ever learned from a book or a newspaper.

Thanks to Dick Gardner, my high school senior-English teacher, who through reading my work (for several years after my graduation) to his classes, helped build the confidence I needed to further pursue my writing. Whether through music, conversation, or editorial advice, Gardner -- with geniality and razor-sharp wit -- provided me emotional and technical support not only for this project, but for my life in general over the past five years.

In the year that I have spent working on this collection, a handful of people have offered strong, steady support by generously sharing their time and expertise. To them, I extend special thanks:

While researching the North and its community, I spent many hours at the NSRWA office, looking through the organization’s extensive files of reports, newsletters, and other river-related data. Dan Jones, Executive Director of the ‘Watershed’ was always friendly and cooperative. Contributing to this project in many ways, Dan answered my numerous questions, helped me set up interviews, and provided me with an abundance of reliable resources -- everything from reports on water pollution, to stories about the river community, to the use of the office computer during my school breaks. When I began volunteering for the Watershed back in 1990, I never imagined that I would be paid back a thousand times over for my efforts.

Will Ryan, Barry O’Connell, and David Smith were the three professors with whom I worked on my Division III; I could not have asked for a better committee. By listening to my ideas as well as offering their own, by reading, editing and discussing even the roughest of drafts, these three men provided the encouragement, guidance, and support that enabled me to work steadily through the year, without excessive stress or frustration. I must thank them individually, as well:

Will Ryan, always enthusiastic about my work, provided strong technical support for this project. With his characteristic straightforwardness and sense of humor, Will not only guided me through the fundamentals of structure, grammar and punctuation, but also taught me a great deal about the finer points of writing. Working with Will, I have become both a better editor and a better writer.

Barry O’Connell helped me to see and develop the larger issues that I needed to address while writing about my own experiences. Offering guidance, but not telling me what I should find, Barry provided quiet (and not so quiet) encouragement, support and reassurance. His obvious care and concern were simple gifts that meant a great deal as I struggled through times of self-questioning and self-revelation.

David Smith, my advisor, Div. II chair, and head of my Division III committee, has seen me through my Hampshire career. Early on, he expressed a genuine interest in my ideas, and he maintained faith in me even when my own confidence flagged. Offering a steady supply of guidance, encouragement, and positive reinforcement, David has been consistently enthusiastic and supportive. Meeting with me on a weekly basis to edit and discuss my work, he has been with me every step of the way, helping me to shape this project from a jumble of thoughts into a fully evolved collection of pieces.

Given infinite time and space, I would not be able to fully express my appreciation for what these last four people have given me.

Ted O’Callahan not only introduced me to the North River, he taught me to appreciate it. Our friendship has had its ups and downs, we have had our share of miscommunications and disagreements, but I would not have made it through this year of Division III without him. Thank you, Ted, for midnight hikes and frost-chilled floats, for boisterous fun and tearful arguments, for helping me with my work and pulling me away from it when I wouldn’t allow myself the luxury. Thank you for leading me through marsh and mudslide to a better understanding of the river, the world, and myself.

Final thanks go to my family, without whom I never would have been able to organize, develop, and complete this project. Thank you, Mom, Dad, and Marnie, for giving me the freedom to live and learn on my own terms, by my own means. Thank you for providing me with a warm, welcoming home, unlimited financial and emotional support, and more love, compassion, understanding, and reassurance than I could ever ask for. I am truly blessed.

I have spent a year and a half developing, researching, writing, and editing this collection of writings. I have passed through some difficult times, had some wonderful experiences, felt sadness, compassion, anger, and joy. I have gone back and forth between depression, elation, and equilibrium, and emerged feeling whole and balanced. I have learned far more than I could ever express in words. This, too is a beginning. The Journey continues . . .

4 - Interlude: A Call to Arms

2008-04-22T16:15:00.000-04:00

You come to this river. Glints of reflected sunlight sparkle on the surface of its silty depths. You hear music in the rippling of its waters, stirred to life by the light summer breeze. Something about the river's gentle flow enchants you; you do not want to leave. You decide to build a house here.

You enjoy living by the river. Soon, other people build houses here as well; you welcome your new neighbors, rejoice in your common appreciation of this body of water.

More people come to the river -- they build houses too. Increased traffic necessitates the construction of a new road, the widening of which requires the filling in of a small section of marsh. "Only a few square feet," they say. Refuse from the old road -- some sand, and a few pieces of sidewalk -- gets dumped on the riverbank. "It isn't much," they say, "and it will protect the houses from flooding."

Years pass. Maybe you're aware of it and maybe you're not, but the river becomes polluted. Specialists track the contamination to a faulty sewage system. Maybe it's yours, maybe it's not, but either way, partially treated waste is being flushed into the river. Your river.

Perhaps the change isn't noticeable. When you stand on your dock, when you look out across the water, the river doesn't seem any different. But although you don't detect a change in its strong, continual flow, you can't help but perceive this river a little differently. Knowing something is wrong has changed it for you.

You enjoy living by this river; you enjoy the resources it offers: the swimming, the fishing, the boating and canoeing. But sometimes at night people race along the channel behind your house, noisy in their high-powered boats. Sometimes they carelessly drop beer cans and cigarette butts into the stream, garbage which you find floating on the water or washed up on your beach. Sometimes a strange brown-yellow foam forms on the water -- a substance no one has been able to identify, a substance that has been proven to contain some dangerous contaminants. Those days you don't swim.

The river doesn't seem to protest, it doesn't seem to mind the changes that external forces are inflicting upon it. It keeps flowing, strong and steady, inhaling and exhaling with the cycle of the tides.

But wading up to your knees, planting your feet in the cool, rich mud, you feel a hundred different emotions. You feel threatened by the rising level of contamination, the slow process of destruction. You feel anxious: have you, in some way, contributed to this pollution? you feel anger, frustration, incredulity: why would anyone want to harm this river, any river? Why would anyone sabotage a natural resource?

But mostly you feel grief, sadness, devastation. You see the beauty you were once drawn to, the light, spirited waters slipping away, dissolving into a dark, fetid sludge. You imagine coming tot he river one day and finding it dry, its resources exhausted; defeated. Visualizing the region cut through with a hollow, lifeless channel -- a road with no travelers -- you gasp at the empty silence.

Sometimes you feel helpless, sometimes you think you can be of use. You want to shout out, to assign blame, but at the same time you fear your efforts may be in vain. You know you cannot change what has already taken place, but you believe that you can have an effect on the future. There is a decision to be made, a step to be taken.

7 - We Shall Gather at the River

2008-04-21T21:36:00.000-04:00

Shall we gather at the river
Where bright angel feet have trod;
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God?

-Robert Lowry

I am standing on the pier at Damon’s Point. Ten feet below, the North River flows swiftly by; it is as if the water, usually calm, has grown restless at this final bend before it meets the sea. The wind is cold and fierce; it comes in furious gusts from the ocean, a half mile downstream. On the calendar, winter will end in a few days, but there are six inches of snow on the ground and a thick sheet of ice covers nearly the entire length of both the North and South Rivers. My faith in the cycle of the seasons is all I have to assure me that spring is on its way.

I have come to this abandoned railroad bridge as I would an oracle. I have brought my question, and silently I ask the river to lead me to an answer. The water seems to speak: carried by the outgoing tide, it passes through this narrow channel, bringing stories from the lands upstream. I must only listen; the music of the river will provide the guidance I seek.

I have come here in search of community -- one based around these rivers, one of which I am a member. I do not know if there is a name for this community -- it could have several names; it may not have one at all. I don’t even know if it exists. I believe I am part of something, a group of people bound together by a single, fluid thread. My mission this week is to follow this thread, to dig deep and find this community’s core. I will review history, ask questions, and talk with people; I will attempt to see plainly that which I have so far only caught glimpses of. I must start at the beginning; if this community exists, it must have roots.

The earliest European settlers in this area built their villages along the waterways. This region had been inhabited for centuries by the Wampanoag, but by November 1620, when Miles Standish, William Bradford, and the other Mayflower passengers decided to establish their colony on the shores of Plymouth Harbor, epidemics of measles and smallpox had severely reduced the populations of the native tribes. Plymouth and the surrounding lands appeared to the colonists to be uninhabited, and ideal for settlement.

Plymouth Colony began granting parcels of land to individuals in 1623; these were to be used for growing corn, and later, other grains. The colony expanded and thrived in the 1630’s. Promised a plot of land on which to establish themselves, thousands of people, many of them religious dissenters, emigrated from England. In pursuit of religious freedom, or fleeing their country’s overpopulation and land shortages, these men and women came to New England with hopes of prospering in what was for them a New World -- a world where, as John Smith proclaimed, they could not fail:

Heer nature and liberty affords us that freely, which in
England we want, or it costeth us dearely. What
pleasure can be more, then (being tired with any
occasion a-shore, in planting Vines, Fruits, or Hearbs,
in contriving their owne Grounds, to the pleasure of
their owne minds, their Fields, Gardens, Orchards,
Buildings, Ships, and other works, &c.) to recreate
themselves before their owne doores, in their owne
boates upon the Sea; where man, woman and childe,
with a small hooke and line, by angling, may take
diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasures?

The colony eventually spread out from Plymouth. “Corne and catle rose to a great prise,” William Bradford explained, “by which many were much inriched, and commodities grue plentiful. . . . As their stocks increased, . . . ther was no longer any holding them togeather.” Settlement extended to Marshfield in 1632; the town, “a plase very weell meadowed, and fitt to keep and rear catle,” was formally incorporated in 1640. A few farms were established along the North River shortly thereafter.

There is no record of the original names of the North and South Rivers. Their current names were given by the first generation of colonists. As L. Vernon Briggs, son of a shipwright and self-elected historian of the North’s shipbuilding industry describes it,

Either because that in going north from Plymouth they
found two rivers, and named the Southern, South
River and the Northern, North River; or. . . when they
discovered these two rivers, one flowing directly from
the north, the other directly from the south,. . . they
named the one flowing from the north, North River,
and the one flowing from the south, South River.

In 1640, the Plymouth Colony Court granted John and Joseph Rogers fifty acres each on the edge of the North River marsh, along present-day Summer Street in Marshfield. The Rogers brothers soon deeded their land to Richard Beare and William Macomber who, along with Anthony Eames, Stephen Tilden, and Morris Trouant, cleared it and established farms.

The North was an ideal location for settlement and an important resource for the early citizens of Plymouth Colony. The waters were rich with fish -- shad, perch, herring, and salmon being only a few of the native species. The riverbanks, open and grassy, sloping gently to the waters edge, provided good farmland, the ground being, as William Wood described, “of a soft mold and easy to plow.” The black grass and salt meadow hay that grew along the channel could be used as cattle feed.

As the towns along the coast from Plymouth to Boston were founded and settled, the North became commercially important. The budding towns required a great deal of lumber; houses, churches, fences, and barns needed to be built. A saw mill often sat at the center of a new village. The North and its tributaries were the ideal location for this and other industries. By the mid-1700’s, mills had been established on nearly every brook and stream. With the demand for milled goods -- flour, shingles, and cloth being only a few examples -- these industries were booming by the end of the eighteenth century. Small factories and foundries, producing nails, tacks, cannonballs, and trunks also prospered.

The shipbuilding industry, set in motion in the late seventeenth century, also brought prosperity to the region. Known nationally for excellence, these shipyards brought widespread recognition to the North, and encouraged further settlement. The building of a ship required many workers; men were needed not only to design and build the vessels, but to deliver lumber and other supplies to the yards, to outfit the ships with masts, sails, and rigging, and to navigate them downstream to the ocean. In addition to providing jobs, the shipbuilding industry generated factories and foundries that manufactured the needed sails, cordage, iron fittings, and anchors.

In the early shipbuilding years, the river community was known as an industrial region, centered around the North and its tributaries, and not -- as it is today -- a group of distinct villages. The community possessed all elements required for a town to operate on its own; a good-sized population of farmers, doctors, merchants, and a fleet of packet ships transporting goods to and from Boston kept most everyone’s needs satisfied.

While the villages that made up the community -- Two-Mile, for example, and North Marshfield -- were part of larger towns, they were not reliant on them. The North Parish Church, sometimes called the ‘Chappel of Ease at North River,’ was established in Marshfield in 1738. The river residents attended services regularly at the local meeting house, as now they were relieved of the chore of traveling miles into their respective towns in order to worship on Sundays. These weekly gatherings strengthened the already strong bonds that held the community together.

Well into the nineteenth century, the North River community grew and prospered. By the late 1800’s, however, a rise in the popularity of steam-powered ships and competition from larger and more efficient mills and factories forced the local river industries into decline. The community, sustained by the local shipyards, mills and factories, began to dissolve. River residents became more dependent on outside resources, and while few actually left the area, the focus of their villages shifted away from the river and into their respective towns.

Lately I have felt drawn to the river; the pull is stronger than it has ever been. I need to immerse myself in its power -- to sit and watch the flowing water, to hear the song it sings. My needs are not practical: unlike the North’s earlier residents, I do not depend on the river for food, clothing, shelter or transportation. Yet there is something within me that needs to be filled -- something I know I can find at the river.

My search is underway. Having reviewed the river’s history, I have discovered a community, a society based on and bound together by the North River. I have found the roots. But this is only a small portion of what I seek; there is much more out there for me to find. Back at Damon’s Point, I stand again on the pier, listening. The river, moving steadily along its path to the sea, tells me to go to the people.

Aaron and Natalie Loomis have lived on the South River for over sixty years. Their house looks out from Marshfield’s Ferry Hill onto the wide channel that follows Humarock to Fourth Cliff and the mouth of the North. They have watched this section of riverfront develop from a small village of summer cottages into what, for all practical purposes, can be called a town. If anyone can tell me about community here, it is they.

Welcoming me into their home, Aaron, a retired engineer, and Natalie, a former schoolteacher, are as eager to tell me their stories as I am to hear them. The Loomises lead me into ‘the river room,’ a glassed-in, furnished porch that affords a wide, glorious view of the water. They have prepared an assortment of maps and photographs to help illustrate their already vivid stories.

Aaron and Natalie met as teenagers, sixteen and thirteen respectively; their families owned summer cottages here, and they attended the same church. Their courtship took place on the river. Aaron would come down the South in his motor-driven, flat-bottomed dory; when he arrived in front of Natalie’s house, he would whistle for her. Together, they would ride up and down the river.

Natalie, a spry woman of seventy five, has spent every summer of her life here. She remembers her childhood on the South River:

My friends and I would get in the river when the tide
was going out and we’d swim all the way to Fourth
Cliff. We would dig for clams, . . . inspect the flora and
fauna, walk some, swim some, until we got to the
mouth. Then when the tide turned, we’d come all the
way back. It took us all day.

The Loomises were married in 1938. They bought a house in Needham, but upheld the family tradition of summering in Marshfield, living in what was then a small cottage on Ferry Hill. Boating, fishing, and water skiing were favorite family activities. When their children grew up and moved away, Aaron and Natalie decided to move permanently to the South River; they winterized and built on to their Marshfield cottage.

In the years after World War II, an Air Force Base was erected on Fourth Cliff; there was also an Army station in the Rexhame dunes. In order to go back and forth between the two bases, the military constructed roads on Humarock. In the following years the peninsula was quickly developed with summer cottages, greatly increasing the seasonal population of the area.

The Loomises remember there being a strong community centered around the rivers. Before the housing boom of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, the population of the Ferry Hill and Humarock area was a tenth of the current size; almost all the houses were summer cottages. People would gather on the beach or have parties; the Fourth of July celebration, with races, games, and fireworks was always popular. Natalie says it was the children that brought and held the community together. “I used to know everybody on the hill,” she remembers.

It was at this time that the local boating community began to grow. In response to the increasing rate of small boat usage, the Marshfield Yacht Club was established on the South River in 1952. This brought more people to the beaches, and encouraged further construction of summer homes. As the population increased and diversified, it became less and less possible to know everyone by name. The close sense of community that had been strong for many years diminished.

Two communities now, we have seen. Both of them gathered around the rivers, both for the most part, gone. In the case of Ferry Hill and Humarock, it was an increase in population that broke the community apart. But while there may no longer be a sense of community among the people who reside near the confluence of the North and South Rivers, some of the bonds must remain. The village may have grown, but with so many houses packed into such a small piece of land, there must be more of a community there, waiting to be found.

In 1965, Route 3, a four-to-six lane highway, was extended from Boston along the South Shore to Cape Cod. The opening of this new commuter route attracted thousands of new residents to Marshfield, Scituate, Hanover, and the other towns in the North River region. Builders were called in to design and construct neighborhoods to suit these mostly middle class, commuter families. Split-cape and garrison-style houses begin to fill in the fields among the farmhouses and summer cottages.

Carolyn Sones, current president of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association (NSRWA), came to Marshfield as part of this population boom. Newly married, she and her husband settled on Ferry Hill in 1967. Like many of the town’s new residents, Carolyn did not see herself as part of a mass movement -- she wanted to live near the ocean, and the house in Marshfield suited her needs. After their two daughters were born, the Soneses moved to Trouant Island, which at the time had no telephone service, electricity, or paved roads. When she and her husband separated the following year, Carolyn and her children moved to a winterized cottage on the southern end of Humarock. Carolyn, a dynamic woman of forty-eight still lives there today.

At one time, the houses on Humarock were all summer cottages; today, more than half of them have been winterized. Most of Humarock’s residents live there year-round. The Humarock Beach Improvement Association is one of the prime forces that draws the community together. What started out as a largely social group has become an organization committed to bettering the quality of life on the peninsula; various efforts -- from getting the town to collect their trash to cleaning and protecting the beaches -- have helped to unite the community. But the strong ties among Humarock’s year-round residents can also be attributed to the Blizzard of 1978.

For most of coastal New England’s current population, the Blizzard of ‘78 will go down in history as the worst storm ever to hit the region. Humarock was among the places that most felt the effects of the storm. The damage was so severe that the National Guard was called in to watch over the peninsula for ten days. No one could enter or leave Humarock without a pass.

On Humarock, electrical power was lost during the first few hours of the blizzard. By the end of the storm, all of the telephone poles on the peninsula had been knocked down. The first high tide sent waves from both the ocean and the river crashing over the barrier beach. When the residents of Central Avenue saw waves surging toward their homes from both sides, they escaped up the hill to stay with their Fourth Cliff neighbors. After the first high tide, those who had places to go evacuated. Twenty seven inches of snow fell in the first thirty two hours of the storm. Winds reached speeds of ninety-two miles per hour.

With a gas stove and heat, Carolyn and her daughters weathered the blizzard in their cottage. Carolyn had no idea that the storm would be as severe as it was. “I didn’t stay for the adventure,” Carolyn urges. “I didn’t know any better, so I got through it.” Seven other people sought shelter in her house, which was one of the lucky few to be spared from the high water, which rose in tides as much as seventeen feet above normal. A makeshift icebox -- a steamer trunk filled with snow -- was kept outside the door, stocked with the contents of everyone’s refrigerators.

Most of the houses on Humarock felt the effects of the storm; while for some the damage amounted only to a flooded basement, others returned to the peninsula to find their homes completely destroyed. Twenty houses on Central Avenue alone had been lost. Those who had weathered the storm on Fourth Cliff had been able to witness the destruction; they had seen the mighty waves tear the houses apart, washing them into the river and out to sea. “Coming down off the cliff after the winds had died down, it was like they had seen a ghost,” Carolyn remembers.

While the blizzard had nearly destroyed these people’s lives, it also strengthened the ties among them. They might not have known each other well, but the citizens of Humarock did not have to think twice about offering their neighbors shelter from the storm. Humarock became a community of survivors. While some residents did not even try to pick up the pieces, others -- with insurance money, perhaps, or the willingness to gamble against a hundred-year storm -- decided to stay. “Every storm weeds out more people,” says Carolyn. But surviving a coastal storm -- even if it isn’t on the scale of a natural disaster-- being able to look back upon the events of the past and say “we made it through,” must bring those who stay closer together.

The communities I have discovered so far have been held together by distinctly different kinds of bonds. While all of these communities are to some extent the thing I am looking for, none of them has possessed the exact characteristics that I pursue. I turn again to the river.

I have come to the Nelson Reservation. Damon’s Point provides an intense connection with the North, but today I am drawn to the river’s quieter, gentler, upstream waters. The snow is still thick and heavy, but my skis have provided me a smooth passage to a bench by the river, a mile into the forest. From my seat, I can watch the water come toward me, flowing downstream. Here I am removed from the busy outside world -- even the rush of nearby traffic is obscured by the sounds of the river. Perhaps in this solace I will find community I seek.

I think back over the experiences I have had on the river, experiences that have made me feel part of a community. There was the party, when I gathered with 150 people and stood hand in hand on the banks of the river to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of a friend. There was Citizen Monitor Program, when I sat around a table with seven others, all of us soaking wet from the pouring rain, testing water samples that we had collected from the rivers. There was the rope swing, when I played and swam in the river with people whom I had never met and would probably never see again. There was the canoe trip, when I joined seventy people on an overcast autumn day to explore the tidal creeks behind the mouth of the North. At each of these four events, we were gathered for different purposes. Whether it was to celebrate, work, play, or explore, the one thing these events had in common was that people were brought together to enjoy the river. The river provided the bond.

When I began this search, I wanted to find that there existed a community based solely around the North and South Rivers. I now see that, given the workings of the modern world, such a community cannot exist. Our lives have grown too complex: we may gather at the river to protect or take advantage of its resources, we may gather there because it is our home, but our gatherings are for the sake of ourselves, not the river’s. We are drawn together by a common cause, or because we want to make a change, and not for appreciation or celebration of the rivers themselves.

What I have been looking for is a community that celebrates the existence of these rivers. Such a community has never existed by name, but it has been present in spirit all along. I see now, that to formally incorporate such a community -- to establish a river appreciation group or to treat the river like a sculpture in a museum -- would take away from its magic and its power.

The community I have been searching for exists. It can be found in every person who enjoys the rivers. We all feel it, each in our own way.

Sitting on this bench, I watch the water come toward me, swelling with the beginnings of spring thaw. It moves downstream, pouring down from the headwaters -- the rivers, lakes and streams that I have yet to explore. But the source, as the Tillamook say, is everywhere -- in the rain, in the groundwater, in the sea and the air. The water may change to vapor and come down again as snow; as it melts, the snow may feed a stream which feeds this river, which goes on to feed the ocean. The river is new every minute, and yet ancient, eternal, cyclical.

Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river,
That flows by the throne of God.

Perhaps what I have been searching for is a spiritual community, a connection to the earth and a superior power. In my experience with the North River, I have established strong ties to people and the land. Being a part of this community, in whatever form it takes, has allowed me to be a part of something simple, and yet vast and unfathomable. The connections are strong, silent and deep. Here at this quiet bend in the river, for once, it all flows clear.

1 - Introduction: Rivers of Living Water

2008-04-21T21:35:00.000-04:00

The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein;
for he has founded it upon the seas,
and established it upon the rivers.

Psalms 24.1-2

“Love this river, stay by it, learn from it.”

Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha

whatever may come
and whatever may go
that river’s flowing
that river’s flowing

Peter Gabriel
“Don’t Give Up”

Two springs ago, I spent five consecutive Saturdays hiking the same route up and down the same mountain. Up and down that trail, I carried a question. I was looking for an answer: a word of wisdom or guidance, a direction to pursue. I brought the same question each time, and each time I returned empty-handed and exhausted. Perhaps I wasn’t ready for the answer, perhaps -- even if I’d been given the guidance I sought -- I would have been incapable of understanding or following it. Summer came, and I turned to the North River, the fluid northwest border of my hometown.

I have spent my life near water. I grew up in Marshfield, Massachusetts, thirty five miles down the coast from Boston. A large pond sat at the western edge of my family’s property, and just beyond it, a cranberry bog. Within five miles were three rivers, several marshes, and the Atlantic Ocean. It wasn’t until I moved away from home that I realized the extent to which the presence of water affects me.

In my first year of college, after coming to terms with being away from the friends, family, and familiar places that meant home to me, I found that there was still something missing. The environment of western Massachusetts was different from what I was accustomed to, and the contrast made me uncomfortable. I knew that, in order to stay, I would have to find at least a temporary source of comfort and security there.

I delighted in the mountains and wide open spaces of the Pioneer Valley, so unlike my home in the suburbs, but I found that I was drawn more to the freshwater rivers and streams that veined the region. It was in those bodies of moving water that I found the provisional sense of home I was seeking. Still, the music wasn’t quite the same -- the right key, perhaps, but a variation on the melody. There was a missing element, one that could not be compensated for; I felt its absence deep inside -- a physical and emotional need that could only be satisfied when I returned to Marshfield.

“If there is magic on this planet,” writes Loren Eiseley, “it is contained in water.” It is moving water that makes me most aware of this magic, especially water that rises and falls with the tides. Slow and steady, the tides are the breath of the planet, inviting harmony among all of nature.

I find myself drawn to those places where water ebbs and flows: I find peace there. I have always loved the ocean, but with that love also comes fear; oceans are vast and unfathomable, far too large to even begin to comprehend. Tidal rivers are more delicate: with the same power, concentrated in a fluid grace, they encourage you to make their acquaintance, to join them in their perpetual cycle of intake and release.

Two summers ago I spent a considerable amount of time on the North, a tidal river. While sometimes I would swim, sometimes I would canoe, and sometimes I would just sit on the banks and listen, I found a kind of fulfillment in the river and its waters.

Summer ended, and I moved away from the river. In the transition, however, I realized that I had found the guidance I had been seeking. It was as if the North, in its timeless wisdom, had given me the answers I was searching for, leading me through a slow process of awakening where I gradually became conscious of that which had been present all along.

With this awareness came an entirely new set of questions, an opportunity to test what I had learned. Rather than stand still, confident in my new-found insight, I knew that I had to follow the river, to turn with the tide that had carried me so far already, and see where it would lead me next.

Pascal writes, “Rivers are roads that move, and carry us where we wish to go.” In writing and researching these pieces, I have learned a great deal about the North and South Rivers and their communities; I have met many wonderful people and learned the details of their lives. But the lessons I will take away from this project touch me on a far deeper level. In the process of conceiving and producing this collection, I have taken a journey inward, to a better understanding of myself and the world in which I live. The North River, present throughout, has been my guide. In thanks, I offer this collection of writings: a tribute.

“The river knows everything;” says Hermann Hesse. “One can learn everything from it.” The lessons are in the water, the moving water, the breathing motions of the tide. The water is alive. There is history there -- love, anger, sorrow, pain, and joy. There are lessons to be learned.

Listen. . .

3 - The Rippling of Waters

2008-04-21T21:29:00.000-04:00

I

Friday, November 25th, 1898; 9 AM: sunny and clear. Thanksgiving Day now behind them, the citizens of Marshfield and Scituate fill the roadways on their way to work, market, and school. Not too cold, not too windy, it is the kind of day on which people are glad to be outside, soaking up a last few warming rays of sun before the biting chill of winter sets in.

Friday, 6 PM: a low pressure area is noted to be moving northward from the Gulf of Mexico along the eastern seaboard. Other reports show a similar weather system moving eastward from the Lakes Region. As these are not unusual conditions for a seaside New England town at this time of year, no special precautions are taken. The townspeople go about in their accustomed ways: making dinner, feeding the horses, settling in for the night.

Saturday, November 26th; 9 AM: a gray day, strangely quiet. Still, the laundry must be done, the firewood must be chopped.

Saturday, 6 PM: the temperature drops. The sky shows signs of storming. The ocean is choppy. Snow flurries begin, and there is talk of an oncoming squall. Cautious perhaps, but not frightened, people seal their windows and bolt their doors; there are provisions enough to last a few days, but no one expects to use them. “This will be a typical New England storm,” they think, “tremendous in power, but short in duration.”

The gale comes on quickly and severely, and lasts through Saturday night, its winds churning the waters, bringing on floods that destroy ships and sea walls, bridges and roads. The eye passes over Marshfield and Scituate around 6 o’clock Sunday morning, offering temporary relief from the relentless snow and winds. Ushered in by another twenty four hours of storming, the sun of Monday, November 28th rises to reveal death, disaster, and drastic changes.

Under normal circumstances, this gale, known ironically as The Portland Breeze, would have gone down in history as another characteristic Nor’easter, its fierce winds and waters causing the usual damage along the coast. However, in the towns of Marshfield and Scituate, a tidal wave, generated by the storm at the height of its power, washed out a wide section of land between Third and Fourth Cliffs, at Humarock. This cut in the beach allowed the ocean to flow inland at a new location, redirected the course of the North River, and added three miles to the length of the South River.

The North and South Rivers spread out like two arcs in a circle, branching in opposite directions from their respective sources, running independently for several miles, and eventually curving back to flow together at Fourth Cliff. The North, the more substantial of the two, springs from the Indian Head (Namassakeesett) River, as well as several lakes and streams; it flows through five towns before emptying into the ocean. The South, on the other hand, finds its source in several small brooks and ponds in Marshfield and Duxbury, and covers only a few miles in its course to the sea. Separate, perhaps, in name only, the North and South Rivers act together to provide a drainage system for about eighty square miles -- over 50,000 acres -- of the surrounding area.

In earlier times, the town of Marshfield was known as Missaukatucket -- “At the large mouth of the river.” Before the Storm of 1898, the peninsula village of Humarock ran south from Scituate’s Third Cliff, extending through Fourth Cliff to the mouth of the North River at Marshfield’s Rexhame Beach. When the new mouth of the river broke through, two miles north of its original inlet, Humarock was suddenly detached from the mainland; it became, if only for a few days, an island. Despite the efforts of a group of divinity students, armed with shovels and determined to keep the mouth open, the inlet at Rexhame filled in with sand, and Humarock was once again a peninsula.

II

It is the day after Thanksgiving, 1992. I have set out from Rexhame for Fourth Cliff, a three-mile walk along a narrow strip of barrier beach. I am out here on this cold, windy, late-autumn day because, intrigued by the accounts of the relocation of the mouth of the North River, I am drawn to explore both the new inlet and the site of the old. By visiting these places, I hope to learn the unwritten details of this vivid chapter in Marshfield’s history. I hope to learn something -- from the land, the river, the ocean and the scrub -- about the changes that took place here.

From the parking lot, I walk away from the beach, toward the river. I have pored over maps of the town, trying not only to determine the exact location of the original mouth of the North, but to get an idea of what it looks like today. As far as I can tell, what was once the mouth of the North is now only another bend in the South, a once mighty inlet now reduced to an exaggerated curve in the river as it winds through the dunes behind Rexhame Beach.

I follow a rough path and find myself encountering a scene unlike anything I have seen in this region. I climb a small hill and look down upon a desert scape: the land is neither beach nor marsh. While the dunes and the river are just as I remember, this hollow is unfamiliar to me: I did not expect to come upon it. Covered with sea heather, marsh grass, and a wide variety of low bushes and scrub, all hazy greens and grays, it stands in stark contrast to the bright blue sky. Although this landscape does not appear unnatural, it seems out of place. Tucked between the ocean and the river, between the marsh and the dunes, it is a hidden pocket, seemingly evolved from a different point in time. Sheltered by the tall dunes from the roar of the sea, it is strangely quiet. The river twists and bends smoothly along the edge of the marsh. Passing by this place, however, it seems to stall a bit; its course peculiar, the river turns just a little too much toward the ocean, as if to challenge its inherent fluidity.

Pausing to contemplate this sight, I am struck. My readings in history, ecology, and geography come together in a flash of awareness as I realize the significance of this place. Ninety four years ago, almost to the day, the land on which I stand was the mouth of the North River.

I have always been drawn to this particular stretch of land. I think back to when I was five years old, playing in the dunes with my friends, discovering that a mysterious river flowed behind the beach. I had a child’s vague knowledge of the geography of the town; I had no idea where this river came from or where it led. I expected fantasy characters -- pirates and dragons, heroes and princesses -- to come sailing by me at any moment, telling tales of a magical, faraway land. Across the marshes and the river I could see houses, far enough away that I could not discern their intricate details. These cottages became grand, sprawling stone castles, with pillars and cupolas and stained glass windows; the inhabitants, whom I never actually saw, were glamorous and mysterious. Since there was no evidence of a road connecting the houses to the mainland, I pictured secret passages through which they had access to town.

Now, with a better grasp of the local geography, this place beyond the dunes has lost some of its mystique. It is the South River -- and not a magical stream -- that flows by here, bound not for a fantasy world, but the Atlantic Ocean. The shining, distant mansions are now white and gray clapboard-shingled cottages, and the people who live there are no different from anyone I know. The mysterious land across the river is actually a neighborhood along the southern border of Humarock, a place unfamiliar to me as a child. But while I have found my physical bearings in this strange place, some of the mystery remains. Looking out across the landscape, I stand in wonder of nature’s ability to completely transform an environment, making a desert scape out of a river and turning a beach into the ocean, all in a matter of days.

I emerge from the dunes and find myself at the southern tip of Humarock. The beach stretches far ahead of me. I see Fourth Cliff, my destination, in the distance. The houses along this stretch of land appear quite diverse in style: sprawling and ornate, with chemically green lawns, some reveal no evidence of salt or water damage. Others, more modest, are small and weathered; they seem cozier, however, and more welcoming. Seven hundred houses fill 2.5 square miles of beach. While for some, Humarock is only a summer retreat, most residents call this narrow peninsula home, twelve months of the year.

Many of the cottages along this stretch are nearly destroyed, with floors fallen in, windows boarded up, and foundations leaning or even completely sunken on one side. All of the houses stand on stilts to protect them from flooding; on some, however, these supports are hidden behind fences or paneling. Just over a year ago the high tides of a late-autumn storm sent waves crashing under these cottages, destroying or at least severely damaging most of them. The owners are still in the process of putting their homes back together. As I pass, I wave to a man who is re-shingling his roof. He waves back, smiling.

Because of frequent storms here, it seems that one can never walk down the beach at Humarock and see all of the houses intact. This narrow, sandy peninsula appears to be remarkably delicate -- only 2200 feet at the widest point -- and yet, other than the breaking through of the new mouth, it has survived hundreds of years of coastal New England weather.

Some say, however, that Humarock is doomed: constantly worn down by wind and water, it grows narrower every year. If erosion continues at its current rate, within the next century the peninsula will be gone. First the ocean and the river will dissolve the land along Central Avenue, the point of lowest elevation on the barrier beach. When the waters pour through, Fourth Cliff will become an island, and the North will once again cut a new mouth. Deterioration of the rest of the peninsula will follow. Signs of these inevitable changes can already be seen. On windy days, high tides often send ocean waves over sections of Central Avenue, into the river. While the water washes away, a thick layer of sand is left on the road; some of this is returned to the beach, but the bulk of it is carted away by the DPW.

I have often wondered why anyone would put so much time and effort into maintaining a house in such a vulnerable place. But stopping to listen to the waves, to look out across the blues and greens of the Atlantic, the motivation seems clear. It’s a high price to pay to live so close to such beauty, but all of it -- the risk, the work, the hardship -- is worth it.

III

It starts with the Avalonian platform, a great bank of granite and shale that makes up what will become -- in six hundred million years -- Massachusetts. The platform is almost completely submerged; a hundred million years pass before a series of volcanoes raise the Berkshire Mountains out of the sea. Within the next hundred million years, another series of volcanoes erupt; an archipelago forms, dotting its way up what will some day become the Atlantic coast. Between the mountains and the islands, there is nothing but water.

Another hundred million years pass. Africa and North America crash together. The force of the collision crumples the Berkshires; the Connecticut River valley is formed. Within the next hundred million years, the Avalonian platform cracks and begins to fold in; as the granite puckers, wrinkles and sinks, the Boston, Norfolk, and Narragansett Basins form.

One hundred thirty million years pass. North America and Africa separate. In another fifty million years, the eastern border of Massachusetts begins to erode; while inland, the land maintains its relatively high elevation, the coastline lowers considerably.

Sixty million years pass: the Ice Age begins. The continent is repeatedly covered and uncovered with the advance and retreat of massive ice sheets. Scraping and scouring the land, the glaciers, some up to two kilometers thick, carve a new topography for North America.

In the period of the glaciers, most of eastern New England -- from the White Mountains to a stretch of land beyond present-day Cape Cod -- becomes a river valley. A great river pours down from the mountains, emptying into the ocean east of what is now Provincetown. Ice sheets advance, streaming with debris-ridden water; they tear away loose rock, clay and soil, building up beds of gravel and silt, transforming the landscape completely. In eastern Massachusetts, the glaciers fan out in three main lobes, distinctly marking the land with terminal moraines -- long ridges of sand and rock. As the ice melts and freezes, melts and freezes again, more and more terminal moraines form; Cape Cod, the hills of the South Shore, and the islands Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard created.

The Wisconsinan ice sheet, the fourth major glacier in this region, begins to retreat around fifteen thousand years B.P.. Within two thousand years, much of southeastern New England is uncovered. As the glaciers melt, leaving behind sediment in the form of drumlin hills and esker ridges, the Great River is forced to redirect its course. Since its entire valley basin is blocked, the river must turn northward. The Boston Basin is left dry.

The melting glaciers fill the oceans, and the sea level rises to a new height. As the water pours into the Boston Basin, a new coastline for Massachusetts is created. What was once a dry basin quickly develops into a large bay lined with gravelly foothills. Since the old river valleys are now obstructed with glacial sediment, the tributaries of the Great River are forced to seek new courses, cutting channels through the low-grounds to the sea. Among these redirected streams are the ancestors of the North and South Rivers.

The melting of the glaciers and the subsequent rising of the water level on the New England coast leave the shoreline dotted with a series of half-submerged hills; over time, rain and snow storms wear them down. As their sands and clays slide down into the ocean, cliffs form. This sediment is picked up by the currents of the coast, and carried inland, forming sheltered harbors, shoals and barrier beaches. The cliffs of Scituate, as well as Humarock’s barrier beach, are formed by this erosive process.

“How the water goes” writes Jim Harrison, “is how the earth is shaped.” Scanning the shoreline, I picture the physiography changing rapidly before me. As if in a series of time-lapse photographs, hills rise up, borne, it seems, from a source deep in the ocean. Winds and rains take their toll, sculpting these solid, sloping mounds into jagged ridges. Loose sand falls into the sea and is dragged southward by the advancing and retreating tides; a long, narrow, beach emerges.

Growing up in Marshfield, among sloping hills and stately pine and oak forests, I have always known the earth to feel solid beneath my feet. The land offers a weathered permanence: no volcanoes, no threatening earthquakes -- only the slow, steady erosion of wind and water. For hundreds of years, the landscape has remained the same; the accounts of my ancestors from the seventeenth century fittingly describe what exists here today. But walking along this beach, across land that has, in the relative span of time, been recently displaced, I feel less than secure. Now that I know of their inherent power, the sea breeze and lapping waves still seem gentle, but deceptively so. I wonder if the same force that reshaped this landscape almost a hundred years ago is lurking here today, waiting for a chance to do it all again. I imagine the ocean, a century of contained energy behind it, breaking through the dunes and rolling up from the beaches, this time flooding the entire town.

IV

After making a ninety-degree turn several miles inland at Rocky Reach, the North River runs north-eastward, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean at the northern tip of Humarock. Before the storm of 1898, however, the North had to make yet another abrupt change in direction between Third and Fourth Cliffs, turning south, and running along the narrow barrier beach nearly three miles before emptying into the ocean at Rexhame. With this indirect path to the sea, neither the salt nor the tides affected the river to any great extent. This made the naturally protected main channel of the North an ideal location for the agriculture, commerce, milling, and shipbuilding that European settlers needed to support themselves in their new world.

Over the course of 226 years, from 1645 to 1871, there were twenty five shipyards on the North River, bringing the region to national fame in the shipbuilding industry. Over one thousand ships were built in this time period; the industry peaked in 1800 when twenty five ships were produced. One famous vessel crafted and outfitted on the North River was the Beaver, historically significant in that its cargo was turned overboard in the Boston Tea Party. Another well-known North River ship was the Columbia, the first vessel to carry the American flag around Cape Horn to the Northwest.

The shipyards of the river towns of Marshfield, Scituate, Norwell, Pembroke, and Hanover were famous for training master builders; a ‘North River man’ was in demand up and down the New England coast. Almost every riverfront family was engaged in some aspect of the shipbuilding industry: some hauled or sawed the timber needed for building masts and hulls, others crafted the iron fittings, sails, or cordage used in outfitting the ships, while still others piloted the packet ships that traded food and provisions with merchants in Boston. Some of the shipwrights had been born and raised on the North River, while others had come there to seek training from the renowned local craftsmen.

The mouth of the North, located at the end of a narrow, shallow channel, was choked with shifting sand bars. Because of the treachery of this passage, only well-trained North River pilots were permitted to navigate boats downstream to the open water. From the shipyards far upriver, it often took a week to sail a ship to the ocean; on account of the large rocks and stretches of shallows of the main channel, a pilot had to rely on high tides to help him steer his boat safely through up to twelve miles of winding river in variable winds. An observer describes this difficult process as a kind of game:

The pilot sat enthroned between the knightheads of
his new vessel, his crew going along on either bank
with long ropes to each bow and quarter, while the
pilot sang out cheerily: ‘Haul her over to Ma-ashfield,’
or ‘Haul her over to Sit-u-ate.’

When rounding the bend between Third and Fourth Cliffs, at least one of these pilots must have wished that it was the river mouth, and not a narrow strip of beach, that lay between him and the ocean. It must have crossed at least one of these pilots’ mind that making a cut in the beach between the cliffs would shorten the distance and simplify the task of getting ships out to sea. Could men make a cut strong enough to divert the course of the North River? Could men dig a channel deep and wide enough to withstand the force of the ocean’s current? Some members of the community thought it was at least worth trying.

An attempt to relocate the mouth of the North was made in 1843. A group of concerned citizens drew up a petition asking the government to make a cut through the beach between Third and Fourth Cliffs; after holding a hearing with the residents of the riverfront towns, the State of Massachusetts decided against the proposal, concluding that making such a cut would inevitably cause damage to the meadows and islands upstream. Despite the state’s rejection of their plea, this group, determined to have their way, set out one night with picks, shovels, hoes, and axes, driving ox and horse teams, using only dim lanterns to light their way.

Working diligently through the night, the group managed to make a wide cut all the way across the beach. A rock-hard meadow bank, however, lying beneath the sand and mud of the riverbed prevented the group from completing their task. The newly-dug channel was not strong enough to resist the force of the tides; water flowed through the shallow cut temporarily, but the beach soon filled back in. There is speculation, however, that because of this initial cut, the ground between Third and Fourth Cliffs was more apt to crumble under the rough waters of a storm, thus making it especially vulnerable to the Portland Breeze’s tidal wave.

It may not have been entirely nature’s choice to cut a new mouth for the North between Third and Fourth Cliffs, but, in the years since the first European settlement of New England, the storm of 1898 was the most intense gale ever to pass through. Its fierce, icy winds blew throughout the weekend following that year’s Thanksgiving, generating huge breakers that pounded the shore steadily, day and night.

Cape Cod was hit the worst, but there were signs of destruction up and down the coast. On Wednesday, November 30, a reporter from the Marshfield Mail wrote:

The passing hours do not seem to bring an end to the
reports of wrecks and loss of life up and down the
New England coast, as the outcome of Sunday’s terrific
storm. All day yesterday places which were nearer
the storm center got word to the outside world, and as
the tale unfolded it was such as New England never
heard before.

Along the South Shore, electric and telegraph poles lay among fallen fences and uprooted trees. Many houses displayed toppled chimneys and broken windows. An anonymous letter from a Brant Rock resident describes the damage as such:

Sea walls are all gone. There is hardly room to drive a
team. . . the bank has washed away so. . . . The roads
are full of wreckage of all kinds, lobster traps, boats
and furniture, I can look out my window and see a
nice bed lounge and stoves, etc. scattered around.

The steamer Portland, which had set sail from Boston on Friday evening was wrecked at sea, smashing against the bars and rips off Cape Cod’s shore and breaking to pieces, sparing not a single passenger. For miles, wreckage washed up on the beach, much of it crushed so thoroughly by the waves that it could not be identified. Clothing, trunks, and merchandise -- boxes of tobacco, cheese, and oil, barrels of whiskey, tubs of lard, and cabin furnishings -- were among the salvage found up and down the shore.

From Casco Bay to Cape Cod, 141 shipwrecks were reported. By Tuesday, November 29th, thirty four bodies were recovered along sixty miles of the Cape’s coast. One hundred bodies were found along the South Shore, from Nantasket to Plymouth.

Although Cape Cod experienced the most severe damage, the effects of the storm in the Humarock area were extraordinary. The winds of the Portland Breeze --reaching speeds of 75 mph -- generated a tidal wave so strong that it burst through the narrow stretch of beach connecting Third and Fourth Cliffs. The cut in the beach was made so suddenly that some of the ‘gunners’ (hunters) who had been camping in shanties on the nearby islands were taken by surprise. Not yet having evacuated to the mainland, four young men, who had managed to survive the first few nights of the gale, attempted to escape the raging waters in a rowboat. But the flood of the storming ocean pouring into the river was too strong: it overpowered their tiny vessel and they all drowned. On duty in nearby life saving stations, some servicemen were forced to abandon their patrol and attempt narrow escapes to higher ground to save their own lives. Seeing that the bridge to Marshfield had been swept away, a patroller from the Fourth Cliff station, in a frenzied attempt to flee the rising flood waters, sought shelter in the high branches of a tree until the winds died down.

V

My hike has brought me to the base of Fourth Cliff. The beach narrows at this point, and I am forced to scramble over rocks to make my way onto the side of the cliff that faces the mouth of the river. The breakers, as Thoreau once characterized them, appear as “droves of a thousand wild horses of Neptune, rushing to the shore, with their white manes streaming far behind.” The roar of the ocean grows; before, I could hear the squawk of seabirds, but now there is only the water.

The family that has been walking ahead of me turns back, deciding to keep to the smoother, wider section of the beach. In their stylish hats and ski jackets, they make a small, colorful pack; the husband and wife are walking together; the son and daughter trail behind, separately. As I trudge toward them through the sand, I begin to feel self-conscious.

Having just taken off my wool hat, I can feel static electricity standing my hair on end. My clothes, although warm, do not match; I am wearing hiking boots and a backpack, and talking into a small tape recorder. Do I appear to them a madwoman or just an eccentric? A confused tourist or just one of the locals? I don’t want to be unfriendly toward these people, but I hope that none of us will feel the need to speak. However it is not only my self-consciousness that makes me want to avoid them -- it would feel wrong, even sacrilegious in a way, to break the thundering calm of the beach. When the family is close enough to see my face clearly, I smile; they smile back. The silence preserved, we pass each other and move on.

The shore of the cliff is littered with large seashells -- periwinkles the size of a fist, giant clam shells and crab skeletons -- as well as driftwood and water-rounded bricks. The debris I find shows signs of a rough, stormy ocean. Scraps of metal and plastic lie among the rocks; a few feet away lie a stereo receiver and an outboard motor. This could be remnants of a capsized pleasure boat, but it is more likely wreckage from last year’s storm. I crouch down to inspect a tangle of shells and seaweed, but a recollection of Thoreau’s finding a body, seven days dead, washed up on the beach at Cape Cod, prevents me from looking closely. Who knows what I might find out here, tucked between the rocks? The wind suddenly picks up and its gusts nearly knock me over. I feel a stab of fear, but I recover quickly. Steadying myself, I can’t help but feel haunted by the history of this place.

Shrugging it off and moving on, I round the bend that brings me to the northernmost tip of Fourth Cliff. The tide surges in, and I am careful not to slip as I step from rock to rock, staying as close to dry land as I can. The waves are high now; the sea, choppy. I consider the possibility of a storm at sea, but as far as I can see, the sky is clear. Far out in the middle of the channel, a small motorboat struggles by, oceanbound; fierce crosscurrents, challenging the boat’s attempts to stay on course, push the vessel from side to side as it passes through the mouth.

The roar is almost deafening now. Here on the tip of this peninsula, I am surrounded by the ocean, the river, and the mouth; as the water swirls around me, I hear three distinctly different sounds. To my right, the ocean ebbs and flows, slowly and deliberately advancing with the tide; to my left, the waves of the South River lap gently against the shore; in front of me, the monstrous river mouth, known far and wide for its turbulence, sucks the ocean in and spits it out into the North’s main channel. There is spirit in the sound of waters -- something to fear, but also something that soothes. Some say it is the sound of God.

While I have looked at the mouth of the North from just about every angle, until today I have never been able to comprehend the volume and power of its waters. I know that boaters have been dying here regularly since the day the new inlet opened in 1898. Either trying to navigate through the mouth or swept in from either side by treacherous riptides and crosscurrents, these people have had their boats smashed, overturned, or even sunk, most of the time from only the force of the water. I recall the story of a pleasure boat, carrying four people, that disappeared here in 1938, only to turn up twenty years later, buried fourteen feet deep in the sand flats off Third Cliff.

Tragedies such as this are not uncommon. Although the inlet has grown considerably wider and tamer with the passing years, even today, wrecks and drownings occur regularly.

Barry Lopez writes, “As I walk along . . . I am aware of both fear and elation, a mix that comes in remote regions with the realization that you are exposed and the weather can be capricious, and fatal.” Here on Fourth Cliff, I find myself in awe of nature’s power to rift, tear, bend and break -- I want to shout with glee, to celebrate the power of water, but at the same time I know I must be cautious. Standing this close to the mouth, on a rock so small that the tide could easily pull it -- and me -- under, I feel myself within the grasp of a wild, savage force. The wind, so strong out here, could push me into the waves with a single gust, leaving me prey to the powerful undertow. All the lives lost in the mouth of the river are no longer just history to me: suddenly they are strikingly real. I step backward off my rock, retreating slowly and carefully, not stopping until I can feel the face of the cliff supporting my back. Shivering, I squeeze my eyes shut, afraid that if I peer too closely into these waters, I will see a ghost.

VI

Turning my attention eastward, I allow the gentle rippling of the South River to soothe me. My composure restored, I look across the inlet to Third Cliff.

The mouth of the North has expanded in size almost fifteen times over since its original cut. Shortly after the storm, the inlet measured two hundred feet in width and ten feet in depth; by 1901, its size had nearly doubled. As the years passed, and nature continued to eat away at the debris left behind by the glaciers, the northern end of Fourth Cliff began to deteriorate -- an acre washed away in the first three years after the storm. Today, the mouth can be from one half mile to a mile wide and up to sixty feet deep, depending on the tides. Evidence of the land that washed away can be viewed at low tide, in the form of a large sand bar.

Through the mouth and southward into Humarock, the South River opens into a sheltered harbor, home to several small marinas. For most of the year there are fishing, lobster, and motor boats moored along both sides of this channel; these add bursts of vibrant color to the browns, blues and grays of the natural landscape. There are several small islands in this section of the river -- some are sandy and flat, completely lacking vegetation, while others are covered with rough scrub and a scattering of stunted trees. Tilden, abutting the western shore of the channel, is a larger, less vulnerable island, bounded by marsh and encircled by Broad and Branch Creeks.

Across the river from Fourth Cliff are Trouant and Bartletts Islands. Trouant, the larger of the two, is scattered with a variety of trees -- cedar, choke cherry, and birch being the most common -- as well as an undergrowth of bayberry, lilac, and swamp rose shrubs. Bartletts, further inland, is covered with cedar, oak, and pine. Centrally located in the estuary, these islands are particularly exposed to incoming tides, but offer the best view of the mouth. Houses, rising from the marshes on the sparse patches of solid ground, are scattered here and there.

Flowing west from the inlet, the North spreads out wide and full, reaching up toward Damon’s Creek, Wills Island, and Herring River, one of its largest tributaries. A mile inland, however, passing through the ruins of an abandoned railroad bed at Damon’s Point, the North funnels down, decreasing in size by half.

In 1900, the Town of Marshfield received $20,000 from the state legislature to repair damages made by the storm. The Portland Breeze had washed away a section of the railroad at Damon’s Point, twisting the rails out of shape and moving some of them up to 200 feet away. The storm had also destroyed the road near Little’s Bridge, a section of the causeway between Scituate and Marshfield, some two miles from the cut.

Before the coming of the new mouth, the ocean’s high tides flowed to the North’s 5,000 acres of salt marsh with the spring tides, only twice each month. The opening of the inlet at Fourth Cliff brought unwelcome change for many of the local farmers, as it increased the frequency of these high tides to twice each day. While these farmers, living as far upstream as Job’s Landing in Pembroke, had been accustomed to harvesting marsh grass at a fairly leisurely pace, having only to coordinate their efforts against the semi-monthly marsh-flooding tides, they now had to harvest their salt meadow hay and black grass between the daily floodings of the marshes.

The opening of the new mouth didn’t affect only the lifestyles of those families settled on the North River. By 1892, the local shipbuilding industry had declined severely, but a new trend of sailing and motor boating had emerged as a popular pastime. The North River Boat Club was founded in 1893, with its clubhouse just downstream from Union Bridge. The organization held races and dances, served refreshments, and kept a full calendar of activities scheduled, soon becoming the social center of the nearby villages. Flooding the floor of the clubhouse on a daily basis, the higher tides of the new mouth eventually forced the North River Boat Club to close down. Still, the popularity of pleasure boating on the North River continued to increase. Today there are three full-service marinas on the main channel of the North, as well as one on Herring River, and four on the South River.

VII

“(He) who hears the rippling of rivers will not utterly despair of anything.” On my way back from Fourth Cliff, I am reminded of this quotation from Thoreau. I agree with him, but I would change one word; I have found spirit and peace in all forms of flowing water. The rippling of waters, then.

I walk atop the sea wall, musing on the truth of this statement. All around me there are signs of despair -- boarded up shops and houses, washed out roads, cliffs eroding and sliding down into the sea. But in this rubble of a storm over a year past, every face I have met has been a smiling one. While all of us, sobered and saddened by the images of damage and destruction around us, certainly recognize the inherent power of the waters off our coast -- the power to demolish sea walls, destroy homes, and drown even the strongest swimmers -- none of us is overwhelmed with a sense of tragedy or despair.

I approach Rexhame Beach, chilled, hungry, and exhausted from my hike. Nearly stumbling over the dunes, my first impulse is to get in my car and go home; although the prospect of rest, lunch and a hot bath is attractive, I decide to stop and sit awhile. Settling into a small depression in the sand, I wrap my arms around my knees in a vain attempt to protect myself from the wind that whips up from the water. In the crash and retreat of the surf, I hear music -- echoes of the mouth, the rivers, and their history resounding in my head.

I recall a series of photographs published in a local newspaper last November that depicted the houses along Central Avenue in Humarock, devastated by that month’s storm. Though disturbing, it was not the images of destruction that stood out to me. While houses swept off their foundations and dashed to pieces by the waves, or even washed across the street and into the South River had a certain grim attraction, it was the faces of the survivors that I was compelled to turn back to, again and again: a woman determinedly sorting through the rubble of her demolished summer house; a man in a motorboat salvaging what he could from his flooded cottage; a young couple curled up together in front of the ruins of their home, pondering on how they would rebuild it. While all of these people had their lives turned inside out, they still had the strength to try to set things back in order.

The inhabitants of the cottages along Humarock’s barrier beach may have to work hard to defend their homes against storms and floods, but with this price comes the luxury of having the ocean in their backyard. These people need only open a window or step outside to hear the roll and crash of the waves and the plaintive cry of the gulls. They can feel the sea breeze, smell the salt in the air, and look out across the Atlantic to see the sun rising on the eastern horizon. And when a storm comes through and destroys what they have put so much time into protecting, perhaps it is the presence of the ocean, teeming with life and renewal, that keeps them from sinking into “utter despair,” giving them the inspiration to pick up the pieces and start over. Perhaps, then, it is indeed the rippling of waters that prevents people such as these from giving up.

How is it that the same force which has the power to paralyze us with fear also has the power to soothe us? How is it that the residents of Humarock can live beside an ocean that they know, with barely a hint of warning, can turn their houses into match sticks -- and yet look to the same waters for consolation and peace? How is it that I can find myself frozen and helpless, terrorized by a sudden understanding of the power of water -- and minutes later seek comfort in it? “Power broods and lights,” Annie Dillard writes. “We are played on like a pipe.”

I have spent the morning on a narrow strip of land, between ocean and river. I have traveled through time, back to the world where continents crashed and fused, back to the world where glaciers advanced and retreated. I have watched a landscape be carved from sand and stone; I have seen it shaped by wind and water. Even today, these transformations continue; the world is in a state of constant flux, and water is the force behind many of the changes.

There is much in nature that eludes me, much I cannot know or understand. Today I have been given a key to unlock a tiny fragment of the mystery. Content, I watch one last wave break and retreat along the shoreline, letting its music linger in my ears as I turn to go home.

6 - Everything That Increases Me

2008-04-21T21:24:00.000-04:00

It pleases me, loving rivers.
Loving them all the way back
To their source.
Loving everything that increases me.

-Raymond Carver

I wish I could say that I grew up on the North River, but it is more accurate to say that I grew up near it. Rising from the Indian Head River at Hanover, flowing at first north and then east to the Atlantic, the North borders my home town, Marshfield, on two sides. Although I have lived in Marshfield almost all of my life, until recently I had never thought of the river as anything more than part of the landscape. Even though I went canoeing and boating on it, even though I crossed its bridges almost every day, I knew nothing about the history or ecology of the North, nothing about the community that worked to protect its resources. It took fifteen years -- and a friend who wanted to show me more of the river than I could see from a highway overpass -- for me to get acquainted with and truly experience the North.

Several years ago my friend Ted took me out in a small, leaky, inflatable boat, to float with the current and explore the river’s marshes, creeks, and wooded banks. In order to reach the main channel from shore, we had to trudge first through a dense forest, and then through at least a half mile of mud and marsh grass. I complained incessantly as I stumbled along, the small cooler I’d slung over my shoulder growing progressively heavier. I struggled in the oozing, slimy, sulfurous mud as it tried again and again to suck off my sneakers, at times engulfing my legs up over my knees. The late-summer reeds, towering a foot over my head, bent over to tickle and scratch every bare inch of my skin. It was a horrible experience, and yet something prevented me from giving up; maybe it was pride, maybe it was hope -- or faith -- that it would get better, but I forced myself to endure this forbidding passage to the open river.

I didn’t know Ted very well: although we had spent time together nearly every day for the two weeks prior to this trip, most of it was with our mutual friends. While Ted and I weren’t strangers before the day of the floating expedition, we hadn’t had much of a chance to talk. Our friends had urged me to spend some time alone with him; they assured me that he was interested in me and that we would have a good time together, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to get involved with him. Having faith in our friends’ judgment, however, I decided to give Ted a chance. When he asked, I agreed to spend the day with him.

As far as I could tell, Ted and I seemed to have very little in common. Any time we drove near the river at low tide, Ted rolled down his window and inhaled deeply, while I opted to close mine tightly and hold my nose. Ted tended to slosh through mud puddles while I carefully skirted around them. While Ted was inclined to examine closely any new thing that crossed his path, I was more apt to approach it from a safe, objective distance. Without our friends there, I didn’t think we would even be able to agree on what to do for the day.

When Ted proposed that we take his inflatable boat out on the North, I envisioned an idyllic Huck-and-Jim, “we had the stars out there,” experience. “We’ll just float down the river-- maybe I’ll paddle a little,” Ted said; “Why don’t we get some food together so we can have lunch while we’re out there.” Ted never mentioned anything about the “adventure” of bushwhacking through the marsh or the “thrill” of leaping over flooded creeks into thigh-deep mud. Instead, he highlighted the peacefulness, the Sunday-afternoon sleepiness we would feel as we drifted with the tide, eating grapes and cheese and sourdough rye.

Although I knew of Ted’s unconventionality and fondness for adventure, I had expected that we would spend our first date doing nothing out of the ordinary. Before the expedition, before any talk of rivers or rubber rafts had come up, the day had gone quite normally: Ted and I spent an hour or two driving around town, doing errands -- something we, with our larger group of friends, often did when we had a free day and the use of a car.

Alone together for the first time, Ted and I weren’t exactly uncomfortable with each other, but the novelty of the situation prevented us from being entirely at ease. I was surprised at how much I liked being with him; feeling relatively relaxed, I didn’t have to try to make things go smoothly. I had been worried that, feeling awkward, we would have trouble making conversation; while at times we were falling back on the inside jokes and well-rehearsed banter of our group of friends, it turned out that we both had a lot to say. Discovering how much we enjoyed each other’s company, Ted and I decided that, to celebrate this beginning, rather than renting a movie or going into the city, we should spend the rest of the day doing something new -- something we didn’t do with our common group of friends.

Imagining a serene, carefree afternoon in the sun, I immediately accepted Ted’s invitation to “go floating.” I knew that having a definite plan for the day would help to lessen the first-date tension we were both experiencing. “That sounds really nice,” I said, as I went about finding my hat, some sunscreen, and a small cooler. “What do you want on your sandwich?”

It was no wonder then, that finding myself tramping through the marsh, nowhere near the wide, shining main channel of the river, I was surprised, if not resentful, about these ‘secondary’ details. Ted had failed to mention how we would get to the river -- was I wrong to assume that we would launch our boat from the riverbank and not the marsh? What Ted referred to as a short walk through some tall grass was -- at least for me -- more like thrashing through a forbidding wilderness. I felt deceived: where was the picnic?

If not for the relative formality of the situation -- it being a date, and not simply a casual outing with a friend -- I might not have been so willing to hike through the marsh in the first place. After following a rough trail through the woods for ten minutes, Ted and I arrived at the edge of a wide field of marsh grass. I looked around in vain for a creek wide enough for our boat, and when I didn’t see one, I realized that we would have to walk through the reeds. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see the main channel of the river; I assumed, however, that the reeds, towering over my head, were blocking my view of the open water. I figured that it would only be a short hike to the river, and when I asked Ted how much longer it would be, his response confirmed my hypothesis. “Just a few more minutes,” he replied, tucking his sneakers into his pockets and stepping into mud. “I’ll go ahead with the boat -- that way, there’ll be a path for you.”

My eagerness to see Ted’s world, to let him introduce me to the things he enjoyed, prevailed over my dislike of towering reeds and reeking mud. I didn’t want to be in the marsh, but I also didn’t want to disappoint Ted by backing out half way through the journey. “I’ve come this far,” I reasoned with myself; “I might as well keep going.” It didn’t seem possible that Ted would purposefully expose me to something I would find uncomfortable or unpleasant -- at least not on our first date. “May be I’m missing something,” I thought, looking our over what appeared to be an overgrown swamp. “Maybe there’s an old cart path in there. . .or at least a cut-and-cleared passage.”

I stepped gingerly from the solid ground onto a patch of roots that looked like it would support my weight, assuring myself that this part of the trip would be over in no time. Soon I’d be floating down the river in the leisurely manner that Ted had described. Innocent of what lay ahead, I began to make my way through the marsh, following the faint trail that Ted had left for me.

It wasn’t until we had trudged along for ten minutes that I began to wonder if we were ever going to make it to the river. I had sunk up to my knees in the mud several times, once getting so stuck that I had to use the boat paddle to pry my feet out. I was now muddy and wet, having fallen into a creek and been obliged to crawl back up its steep bank. My hands and forearms were scratched from pushing aside the reeds and vines that fell in my path. I was furious with Ted for not telling me about this part of the trip. Had he mentioned this to me in his initial description, I surely would have rejected it, and instead we could have gone canoeing, or for a walk on the beach. “Anything,” I said to myself, “would be better than this.”

Knowing Ted’s appreciation for the stink of the marsh at low tide, however, and being aware of his sense of adventure, I had to admit that I had been warned. Ted was unable to conceive of this as anything but fun. Regardless of the fact that he didn’t know me well, Ted had most likely assured himself that I was having a good time, despite my seemingly incessant complaints. Realizing that he might be blind to my discomforts, I felt compelled to make him aware of just how I was feeling. Covered with mud, itchy from the salt, and slapping mosquitoes left and right, self-righteous anger seemed to me to be the best approach. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!” I shouted, hoping that, sensing my resentment, Ted would at least stop and wait for me.

But I wasn’t really angry -- just frustrated. The situation was ridiculous: I was falling into just about every sinkhole, tripping over just about every tangle of roots, getting caught in just about every thorn bush, while Ted seemed to glide over the marsh, hardly even getting wet or muddy. Each time I found myself up to my knees in mud or ensnared in the barbs of a stray vine, I would try to get Ted’s attention. The first few times I had patiently called out for help, but by the end, I was swearing in a way I had never imagined myself capable. Each time, regardless of the tone of my voice or the sincerity of my plea, Ted would have the same response. Twenty feet ahead of me, balancing the rubber boat on his back, he would look back over his shoulder and snicker, his usually charming but now infuriating smirk creeping across his face.

There are less complicated ways to reach the North River than trekking, expedition style, through marsh grass and mud. Canoe launches, boat yards, and gently sloping pine forests line much of the riverfront, facilitating passages to the water. That Ted chose to lead me to the river by way of the most uncompromising and easily discouraging route was most likely -- as I see now -- intentional.

There are too many people who use the river but don’t respect it, too many people who take the river for granted, polluting and abusing it, too many people who take all the river has to offer giving nothing in return. Perhaps this was meant to be a challenge. Perhaps Ted wanted me to see all of what the North was about - not just the spectacular views and wide open channels that the seasonal visitors are so fond of, but all of it - its swamps, its mosquitoes, the stink of its low tides. Being led to the open water over marsh and mudslide, I would find out what nature required to make and maintain such a river. Reaching the main channel, I would be relieved and appreciative, more sensitively aware of the North’s deep, intense simplicity, its fluid, determined movement, its gentle, elusive song.

Thoreau writes, “Not till we are lost. . .do we begin to find ourselves.” We need to lose ourselves -- to get so tied up in joy, fear, love or anger that we are set free from our usual standards and perceptions. We must, as Annie Dillard says, “go up into the gaps,” and explore what we have never bothered or wanted to look at before, taking on the challenge of new experience and “growing wherever we can.” We need to push ourselves, to challenge our boundaries, to lead ourselves into uncomfortable places where we will be exposed to the unfamiliar and set off balance. In the struggle to restore a sense of equilibrium or comfort, we will learn.

Hiking through the marsh, enduring the mud, the reeds, the salt and the bugs, I was forced to take a close look at myself: What was preventing me from enjoying this adventure? Why was I revolted (and not amused) by the the mud squishing between my toes? Why did I see it all as punishment rather than fun? While I kept wishing that I could close my eyes, say a magic word, and be delivered, clean and dry, to the open river, I knew that resentment and self-pity weren’t going to get me out of the marsh any faster. Finding myself stuck, knee-deep in mud, forced me to question and test my limits -- it was no longer a choice. I had to understand that it wasn’t the marsh or the bugs -- or even Ted -- that I was up against, but myself.

I made it to the river that day. Thrashing through the final section of marsh, I felt the boundaries of my narrow, confining world stretching, opening to let in the new. I was struck silent by the sight that lay before me: the North River, grand and glorious. The water, reflecting the clear, blue, summer sky, rippled and sparkled under the feathery breath of the wind. The reeds that I had spent the past forty minutes fighting through were illuminated by the August sunlight, dancing in golden waves in the gentle breeze. The sulfurous odor of the marsh had given way to a fainter smell -- grass and earth and salt water combining in the sea breeze that blew gently up the river. I could hear water trickling from the creeks, making sweet music against the plaintive cry of the geese passing overhead. All around me -- in the marsh grass, in the tree tops -- there was green, reaffirming the presence of life and growth that had been obscured by the dark, slick mud and pungent stink of the marsh. My struggle to get to the open river was suddenly worthwhile.

Stepping down into the boat and feeling the water buckling under but ultimately supporting my weight, I knew I would never look at the North the same way again. Stretching over the sides of the boat, Ted and I used our paddles to push off from the riverbank and into the main channel. The current took us in and began to carry us downstream, slowly leading us around bends and into creeks and coves, inviting us to explore the miles of river that lay ahead.

When our day on the North was over, Ted made me promise that I would let him take me floating again; I, in turn, made him promise that next time we would embark from a cleaner, drier riverbank. That night, to make sure that Ted understood that I had not enjoyed our trip through the marsh, I insisted that we watch “The African Queen.” I wanted Ted to watch Charlie Allnutt and Rose Sayer slash through the underbrush and slog through the warm, slimy mud of Central Africa. I wanted him to see them battle flies, leeches, and mosquitoes as they dragged their battered boat through the shallows of the Ulanga River. I wanted Ted to experience the marsh as I had experienced it, and while I knew that wasn’t possible, I assumed that the film would get my point across.

It was a point well taken. Ted and I went floating a lot that summer, but we never again took the path through the marsh. Like Charlie and Rose, we discovered that there was an entire world out there for us to experience -- plenty of other stretches of river to explore, plenty of other places to launch the boat. We were eager to get started, and we planned to see it all, together.

Now, six years later, the romance has long since passed, but Ted and I still spend time on the North. The nervous excitement that we shared in the first few weeks of our relationship has been replaced with a calm that can only come from years of friendship. Over the past six years, our lives have diverged and converged several times. Ted has traveled to distant places -- Appalachia, Taiwan, Patagonia -- seeking insight about himself and his place in nature; my journeys have kept me closer to home, looking within for the wisdom I seek. But in our questioning, in our search for the truth, we -- different individuals looking for different answers -- have always come back to the North River.

Ted and I still see the beauty of the North differently. I have come to appreciate the thick scent of low tide, but when Ted invites me to go floating, I still insist on launching from the riverbank. I cannot bring myself to return to the marsh. “One of these days you’re going to want to go that way again,” he assures me. And while I know he’s right, my response is always the same. “Well, okay. . . but not today. ”

“How can you make a case for yourself” Jim Harrison writes, “before an ocean of trees, or standing/ waist-deep in the river?” There is something in the marsh that I am not ready to confront, something that makes me feel small and weak, and at the same time furious with myself for being so.

What scares me about being in the marsh -- or in any kind of wilderness -- is that with the constructs of civilization removed, with everything that’s usually there to hold onto suddenly taken away, all I am left with is myself. In the marsh, it was the murk that I had to confront; not even Ted -- my guide, my friend, my date -- was willing to help me through it. But I have felt the same fear, the same frustration again and again since then -- emotions that arise not as much from the scariness of the situation as from the prospect of having to face it on my own. Whether on a highway with a broken-down car, atop a mountain with a storm coming in, or nearing college graduation without a plan for the future, I have ultimately faced one final question: am I strong enough to pull myself through?

The North is always going to be there for me. I will continue to swim, float, and canoe there, continue to find peace, joy, and comfort in its waters. But until I am willing to hike through the marsh again, there will be a voice in the back of my head reminding me that there’s an aspect of this river I have yet to accept and embrace. Only when I return to the marsh, only when I make that trek through the mud, grass, and reeds, will I be able to learn everything the North River has to teach me. Everything that will increase me.

5 - A Scenic and Protected River

2008-04-21T21:21:00.000-04:00

1986: the North River smelled. It was not the scent of mud baking in the sun, not the pungency of low tide, but a stench, unnatural and rank. Islands of sewage were floating on the water; deposits of septage up to one foot deep could be found. Swimming was unadvisable. High concentrations of fecal coliform bacteria had forced the closing of the clam flats. The pollution in the river was so severe that Paul Hogan, senior biological engineer for the state Department of Environmental Quality Engineering was prompted to compare the North to its notoriously hazardous neighbor, Boston Harbor. “The only difference,” Hogan noted, “is the smaller scale.”

That summer, it was revealed that the Town of Scituate’s Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) was periodically discharging untreated or partially treated wastewater through an illegal overflow pipe that emptied into First Herring Brook, a tributary of the North. The BSC Group, an environmental consulting firm hired to evaluate the water quality of the river, confirmed that this outfall pipe was a prime source of the North’s pollution.

One year later, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued Administrative Order No. 698 to the Town of Scituate, ordering the development of a more effective means of wastewater treatment and disposal, and imposing a moratorium on new sewer connections to the plant. However, the DEP did not provide a timetable for the renovations. Two years passed while the conditions at WPCP remained the same.

By January 1989, WPCP was still discharging inadequately treated wastewater into the North. Determined to set a change in motion, the North and South Rivers Watershed Association (NSRWA) filed an intent to sue the Town of Scituate. The charge was that by failing to improve its wastewater treatment facility, Scituate was violating the Federal Clean Water Act, which prohibits the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters. Scituate filed a Motion of Summary Judgment, counter-charging that since the DEP was already prosecuting the town, the NSRWA had no right to sue.

In January, 1991, the US District Court denied the NSRWA the right to maintain their lawsuit against Scituate. The Association appealed the decision, but again their motion was denied. Rather than continue to pour time, money, and energy into what was turning out to be a futile legal battle, the NSRWA decided to redirect their efforts. In April 1992, the Association announced that, by working closely with state administrators and the community, they would continue to press WPCP to bring its facilities up to standards.

“[They see us] as outsiders meddling in town affairs,” commented Dan Jones, Executive Director of the NSRWA, “[but] since the plant . . . discharges into a public resource, we won’t accept their parochial attitude of ‘leave us alone, we’ll fix it, it’s our problem’.”

Whose ‘problem’ is it when a natural and public resource becomes so polluted that the quality of life in the surrounding community is threatened? Whose problem is it when the native flora and fauna become endangered, when the air begins to smell and the water shows signs of contamination, when a national landmark becomes a health hazard? Should the ‘problem’ be left in the hands of the authorities when it begins to affect community assets, when it has the potential to cause a decrease in property values and a decline in the patronage of local businesses? Should the people who will feel these effects just stand back and let the experts take care of things?

The North River has seen its share of pollution. It has seen meat processing plants release up to 100,000 gallons per day of ‘pickling process waste’ into its streams. It has seen sewage treatment plants reduce the water quality of its creeks to that of a septic tank. It has been a dumping ground for household waste, broken appliances, and abandoned cars. Pollution in the North goes back as far as the eighteenth century, back to the days when mills and factories lined the riverbanks, fouling the waters with chemicals and choking them with debris. But that was in the past. The contaminated areas have been cleaned and the sources of pollution are no longer a threat. The problems of the past, now solved, do not have a direct effect on the people who live on and use the river today.

Scituate’s Water Pollution Control Plant, however, is not a problem of the past. WPCP has been polluting the North with Scituate’s fecal waste for twenty years. For the past six years, the plant has been under order to repair and improve its facilities, and put an end to the pollution it causes. It has yet to do so.

WPCP was constructed in 1967. By 1971, effluent discharged from the plant was found to be high in nutrient and fecal coliform concentrations. But since the pollution levels were high only in the tidal creeks adjacent to the plant, and not at the river mouth, WPCP was given a permit to continue operations.

Scituate’s Water Pollution Control Plant was originally designed to discharge wastes into leaching beds only; as early as 1973, however, the plant was bypassing the sand filtration beds, emptying incompletely treated effluent into the marshes when the beds were being cleaned or when there was a particularly high flow of discharge. In 1980, neglecting to obtain a required permit, the plant installed an outfall pipe that led directly into one of the North River’s tidal ditches.

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 and its companion, the Federal Clean Water Act of 1977 set standards that required not only thorough treatment, but also permission from the federal government, before any waste could be discharged into a body of water. Without a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, no one can release pollutants into navigable waters. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has never issued such a permit to WPCP.

WPCP had been making periodic discharges of contaminated effluent for four years before state environmental agencies caught up with them. In June of 1984, an ‘accidental spillage’ at the plant resulted in a temporary closure of the clam flats near the mouth of the North River. The clam flats were reopened a few days later, after the spill had been cleaned up. Soon after, however, the contamination resumed its previous high concentration, and the flats were shut down once again. Continued pollution kept the North River clam flats closed for most of the next year, and prompted a threat from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to close the flats indefinitely.

Pollution in the North persisted. The fall of 1988 brought an indefinite closure of clam flats in the river. High levels of fecal coliform bacteria had been detected in the water, and wastes from WPCP were once again suspected as the prime source of contamination.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the pollution in the North should be blamed entirely on Scituate’s Water Pollution Control Plant. Other, more irregular sources -- such as faulty sewage systems and discharged wastes from septage handlers and holding tanks -- are known to contribute to the contamination.

Although pollution on the North does not come exclusively from WPCP, the treatment plant is, in fact, the principal source. As long as the plant’s facilities continue to be inadequate, the pollution levels in the river will remain high. By neglecting to make the necessary repairs and improvements for the past six years, the Town of Scituate is setting a precedent that will only encourage further neglect. If the river’s primary polluter can continue its contamination of the river despite orders from the Department of Environmental Protection to update its facilities, what incentive is there for the secondary polluters to change their ways? What is there to stop the secondary polluters from thinking that no one will notice their misconduct while the primary polluter is still at fault?

For twenty years, WPCP has contaminated the North River. Even the state authorities have not been able to force the plant to bring its facilities up to standards. Does this remain a problem to be left in the hands of the authorities? The North and South Rivers Watershed Association (NSRWA) asserts that it is not. Ever since the problem was revealed, this organization has been working hard to stop WPCP from polluting the river, and taking steps toward preventing any further damage.

The NSRWA was founded in 1970. Determined to raise the water quality of the rivers, the fledgling organization immediately began to investigate sources of pollution and urge legislation that would ensure cleaner waters. One of the early goals of the NSRWA was to obtain governmental protection for the rivers and their tributaries. The state of Massachusetts had designated the North a Scenic and Recreational River in 1971, but had made no effort to protect it. In 1977, the U.S. Department of the Interior recognized the North as “possess[ing] national significance in illustrating the natural character of the United States,” and named the river a national landmark. The state was then obliged to grant the North a Scenic River Protection Order; among other things, this order established the North River Commission, a group of delegates from each of the five primary river towns, whose responsibility it was to implement and enforce the state’s revised guidelines for protecting river resources.

Through the years, the NSRWA established a wide base of supporters. Increasing numbers of people became concerned enough about pollution in the rivers that they were willing to offer time and money to help get the NSRWA’s pollution abatement projects off the ground. By the late 1980’s, the organization had both the financial and volunteer support needed to make a considerable effort toward mitigating river pollution. Even though it was busy with the WPCP situation, the NSRWA found time to initiate several programs, all of which relied on community support to ensure their success.

In their study of the water quality of the North, the BSC group indicated faulty sewage disposal systems and storm drains within the river corridor as possible contaminants. In 1990, to pinpoint defective sewage systems, the NSRWA established the Adopt-a-Stream program. Every month, volunteers collected water samples at twenty-five stations along both the North and South Rivers, as well as some of the tidal creeks and streams. Physical and chemical parameters (such as rate of flow, temperature, and amount of dissolved solids) were recorded, and then the samples were taken to a laboratory to be tested for fecal coliform concentration. Running steadily for three years now, the Adopt-a-Stream program has been successful in locating pollution sources in the rivers; important steps have already been taken to identify and repair faulty sewage systems.

Another NSRWA pollution abatement project set into motion in the wake of the BSC findings was the Non-Point Source Pollution Mitigation Program. This project involved close monitoring of storm drains in order to determine where insufficiently treated runoff from roads was entering the rivers. Today, five sets of storm drains are being studied and improved; catch basins have been cleaned and illegal pipes have been removed.

Perhaps the most basic, and yet the most clearly effective program being carried out by the NSRWA is River Clean-Up Day. The NSRWA instituted this annual event in 1988, encouraging people to spend the day -- or at least a few hours -- removing debris from the rivers and their banks. Bottles, cans, and plastic bags are always found in abundance, but refrigerators, motorcycles and other household trash are not uncommon. Over the years, rubber tires, outboard motors, and cans of paint and paint thinner have been recovered as well. Every year, the NSRWA employs a fleet of canoes, rowboats, and pickup trucks to transport the great quantities of trash from the rivers to the town dumps.

While it is important to rid the rivers of garbage, while it is important to identify and repair defective sewers and storm drains, these tasks are not always enjoyable or rewarding. When working with a problem that cannot be solved in a short period of time, it is crucial that enthusiasm, involvement and support be maintained. The Harvest ‘95 project was initiated for this purpose.

The NSRWA launched this campaign in 1991, under the direction of the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF). The project’s goal is to see that the water quality of the North is improved to the extent that the clam flats can be reopened in 1995. While encouraging the public to continue to push for improvements at WPCP, the Harvest ‘95 project gives people something to look forward to: if all goes as planned, 1995 will bring what will be the river’s first soft shell clam harvest in almost ten years.

In order to gauge the progress of this project, the NSRWA has been working with fourth graders at Marshfield’s Furnace Brook School. The children, as well as a few adult supervisors, have been attempting to raise seed clams in screened in boxes at several points near the mouth of the North. When uncontaminated clams can be harvested from these test sites, the NSRWA will have reached its goal. No less important, the Harvest ‘95 project will have both encouraged a number of children to appreciate and care for our natural resources, and informed them of their right to reject the notion that protecting these resources has to be the authorities’ ‘problem’

Today, the North River is cleaner than it has been in years; it has never been more protected. There are restrictions on all construction within one hundred yards of the natural bank of the river; these laws guard against most kinds of filling and dredging, and prohibit the building of new factories and other places of industry. Numerous tracts of land have been set aside for conservation and wildlife preservation. But while many problems have been solved and many trouble areas have been corrected, there is a great deal more to be done.

None of the NSRWA’s programs and projects could have been carried out without people taking on the pollution in the river as their own ‘problem.’ Without the widespread public effort put into detecting and mitigating pollution on the rivers, it is unlikely that the rivers would be anywhere near as clean as they are today.

We cannot let ‘the authorities’ -- through their inertia or inaction -- stand in our way of keeping the river clean and protected. If those of us who are passionate about this cause feel that we should be doing something about it, then by all means, we should be doing something. If we believe that the ‘authorities’ are doing us wrong by not forcing WPCP to update its facilities immediately, then we have a right to speak out. If we believe that six years is far too long to wait for these improvements to be made -- or even started -- then it is our right and responsibility to speak up, to do what we can.

2 - Voyageur

2008-04-21T21:15:00.000-04:00

In this final hour of the autumn equinox, my companions and I drift down the moonlit North River; a cool September wind blows steadily at our backs, as if proclaiming the arrival of fall. Still warm from the last days of summer, the water is covered with a fine gray veil of mist and fog. The sounds of rushing traffic and buzzing streetlights fade into the night, replaced by the lapping of river on shore. Having just launched our inflatable raft from the old stone bridge in Hanover, we float with the current, passing silently through sparsely forested backyards, unseen by dogs standing midnight guard. It is dark on the river, and if not for the dull glow of porch lights in the distance, we might not see the surrounding houses at all.

The shore is high and wooded along this stretch of the North, land well suited for development. Hardly a spare half-acre exists among houses and docks. At first, my companions and I talk quietly; however, hearing our conversation resound, reflected back at us by the water and the banks, we lower our voices to a whisper. Unappeased, the wind blows through the trees, rustling the leaves as if to hush us further. Without speaking, the three of us, good friends for years now, agree to preserve the stillness of nighttime on the river; we will pass this floating trip in silence.

As we drift slowly downstream, carried along by the ebbing tide, the banks become lower and grassier; as the forest retreats from the main channel, the mud, grass, and tall reeds of the marsh take its place, dividing the water and the land. Here, where there are no houses, it is easy to picture the North of long ago. The quarter moon puts the features of the woods, banks, and marshes in shadow; in the darkness I am free to reinvent the landscape.

I have been reading about the prehistoric populations of this region, the native bands who inhabited southeastern New England for thousands of years, long before Europeans made contact. With their lush forests and proximity to the ocean, the shores of the North would have been an ideal place for such a band’s base camp. Peering through the fog, I envision the land inhabited by these people. Vivid images flash in my head and I am drawn in; all signs of modern civilization are erased as I am transported to the North River of thirteen thousand years ago.

I watch the Late Wisconsinan glacier retreat from southeastern Massachusetts. Five hundred years pass, and a band of Paleo-Indians wanders into the region, following herds of mastodon and caribou, from whose carcasses they take their nourishment. The features of the environment are changing rapidly; over the course of a few generations, the post-glacial tundra will become a pine, spruce and lichen forest. These evolving natural conditions make food sources unreliable. The band must move camp as the game they hunt moves; between kills they eat smaller animals, shellfish, and edible plants. Tonight, they have set up on the banks of the North. In camp, a small village of skin-covered shelters, a few men work with stone -- making or repairing scrapers, drills, and fluted points. Women pack food into woven bark and grass containers. In the morning, they roll up their shelters and the band moves on.

Our boat has suddenly stopped moving. We have drifted into a culvert, an expected pitfall when navigating the river in a rudderless raft; we will have to row until we can pick up the current again. Since there is but one oar, two feet short of practical length, we must take turns rowing. To have any control over the raft, the helmsman must steer from the bow; only by leaning over the front of the boat can he or she effectively row on both sides. One of my companions volunteers for the first shift, and I am free to return to my journey through time.

It is a beautiful night -- cold but not unbearably so; while mist and fog rise from the water, the sky appears almost completely clear. The air smells of pine, mixed with the rich scent of decaying leaves. Obscured from plain view by a stray cloud and the moisture in the air, the moon looks distorted; seeming to change shape with each passing bend of the river, it appears as a haze, a streak, a beacon.

This is the kind of night that invites spirit to come alive. As we drift silently downstream, sounds of nature fill the air: the tinkle and trickle of creeks flowing into the main channel, the flapping and splashing of wildlife, the soft breeze loosening leaves from the trees. I hear sweet music in these sounds, a hymn -- what Emily Dickinson described as the “unobtrusive Mass.”

The Wampanoag, the most recent Indian tribe to inhabit these shores, speak of spirits -- manitos -- that represent all aspects of the natural world. Animals, crops, seasons, directions, and weather conditions, as well as the sun, the moon, the sea, the sky, and the earth all have corresponding spirits, which are accessible through dreams and visions. Tonight I feel as if I am being watched over by these spirits: the tide god is carrying my boat downstream, the moon god lights my way, and the wind god, with its chilling breath, keeps me alert -- attentive to my surroundings.

With the landscape stripped of its daytime colors by the moonlight, the river appears as an entirely different place -- a black and white photograph from an era long before my time. Without the sun’s light, I feel strangely out of place in this world: an observer, but not a participant.

The marsh at night is a new experience for me. Being out here after sunset for the first time, I marvel at how alive the river environment seems. During the day there are fishermen and naturalists on the water and along the shore, motor boats and canoes moving up- and downstream, jets and the occasional biplane flying overhead. This activity essentially ceases as the sky darkens into night; as the backdrop of human activity wanes, the presence of other life on the river becomes much more apparent. It is easy to overlook the fact that nature carries on, with its own schedule, independent of human influence; while it is a human tendency to shut down at night -- to grow quiet, to sleep -- the natural world does not necessarily follow this example. “The creek runs on all night,” Annie Dillard writes, “. . . whether I wish it or know it or care.”

We round another bend, and the bank grows high and flat again. Enveloped by mist and fog, I cannot see the shore clearly. When my eyes adjust, I see an Indian settlement of 2700 years ago, a row of oblong wigwams along the banks of the river. Ten thousand years since the Paleo-Indian period, the woods have transformed completely: now a fully developed forest, there are chestnut, hickory, beech, and oak trees growing amongst the pine, spruce and hemlock.

Before me lies an autumn hunting and fishing station, typical for the Indians of the Early Horticultural period. A man, spear in hand, has just killed a deer; a woman butchers the meat with a stone blade, saving the bones and hide to be used later for tools and clothing. One man fishes with a hemp line and bone hook, while others cruise the river in dugout canoes with nets; a weir is set up on a nearby creek. A small group of women and children gather nuts, which later they will grind with stone mortars and pestles.

When the weather grows colder, these Paleo Indians will move inland, to the banks of a stream or pond. Since they will have preserved and stored much of the previous summer’s harvest, there will be food to eat when fish and game become scarce. In the spring they will return to the riverside camp; in summer, they will settle close to the ocean. At the oceanside camp, using stone axes to fell trees, they will clear space for fields, and work the land with stone hoes and digging sticks. For these, the first generation of southeastern Massachusetts natives to know the skills of agriculture, corn and beans will be the chief crops. Shellfish, especially soft-shelled clams cooked in soapstone pots, will supplement the diet of fish and gathered foods.

Beholding the North of thousands of years ago, I look out upon a very different river. The banks are virtually uninhabited -- with only a scattering of fishing stations in the spring and fall. A panorama of greens, browns, and golds, the landscape appears fluid, uninterrupted by houses, docks, and the harsh metal glare of highway bridges. The noise, however, is the most striking: with no motorboats, cars, or airplanes, the whisper of wind, the tinkling of water, and the murmur of wildlife -- although quiet -- fill the air with sound.

Today we value the North as a choice location for building a house, an ideal place for recreation, a spectacular sight from the highway at sunset, but our lives are not centered here; we work in the city, buy our food from the store, and visit the river for an occasional swim or canoe trip. For the earlier inhabitants of this region, however, the river provided the essentials: food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. In order to survive here, the Indians had to be attuned to the rhythms of the environment; as the seasons changed, they had to know where and when they could find food resources. What kinds of wild plants were safe to eat? Where was a good place to stalk deer? When was the best time to harvest shellfish, to plant corn, to pick blueberries?

Today, given the conveniences of modern society, it is not nearly as important for us to understand these rhythms. Perhaps this is why we now view the river as ‘nature’ -- something separate and distinct from the world we live in. The North is not so much an integral part of our lives as it is a place we visit for solitude, fun, or escape.

Thousands of years have passed, but has the North actually changed? The physical layout -- the bends, the rocks, the rapids -- may have shifted, but the colors, the sounds, and the beauty, partly hidden behind houses and under docks, are still here. Our conception of it may be different -- the encroachments of population, development, and pollution may have reduced a once-sprawling riverine environment down to a narrow corridor -- but the river itself has remained constant. Fed by creeks and streams, by rain and snow, the North runs on timelessly, rising and falling with the breath of the planet, the rhythm of the tides. It is forever moving, forever changing: eternal.

The night’s chill has set in; shivering, I am jarred into consciousness. The cold has penetrated the layers of my winter clothing; I must row to keep warm. A conversation of glances and nods and a careful switch of positions lands me at the head of the boat, leaning forward, oar in hand.

The houses along this stretch of river are large but modest, with an understated elegance; in weathered whites, grays, and browns, they blend in well with the landscape. Furnished with bay windows, glassed-in porches, private docks and landings, these dwellings -- some restored farmhouses, others more modern in style -- reflect the high value of riverfront property. I suspect that every ‘improvable’ lot along the river is currently developed. Despite the inconveniences that come with having a public waterway in the backyard -- the noise, the river traffic, the loss of privacy -- this land is in high demand.

Drifting along the perimeter of these yards -- many of them carefully marked off with fences, all of them measured out in acres and precisely recorded at Town Hall on plot plans and maps -- I see the irony of land ownership. A person can buy the land that directly abuts a river, fence it in, and declare it ‘property.’ However, like anything in nature, a river and its surroundings are in a constant state of flux; under the effects of erosion, current and tide, the physical features of a river change -- quite frequently.

Blocked by an accumulation of sediment, a meander breaks off from the main stream and becomes a lake; the lake fills up with mud and silt, and reeds and other vegetation begin to grow. The house that once looked out upon a river now banks up against a marsh. In a hundred years, what is now a manicured ledge of lawn and shrubbery might be bisected by a creek or flooded by a rising tide, solid ground dissolving into water. As main channel transforms into oxbow, as solid shoreline transforms into marsh, the binds of property are broken. Not by deed, not by decree, land holdings shift uncontrollably, with no one but Mother Nature to blame.

The native cultures who inhabited this land for twelve thousand years before European settlement conceived of land ownership differently than we do today. The Indians viewed the land as something on which they could hold sovereignty, and not as a commodity they could buy or sell. In Indian thought, since both man and the land were part of the system of nature, man could not have power over the land; man could possess the use of the land, but not the land itself. Thus, while not giving up its own rights, a village or tribe could grant others permission to use a berry patch, for example, or a fishing pond, shellfish bank, or hunting ground.

The Indians did not measure and record boundaries; instead they defined their territory by more general markings -- the shore of a river, perhaps, or the edge of a forest. Rather than building permanent, year-round settlements, they moved seasonally, establishing hunting, fishing, or agricultural camps. Periodic migrations such as these helped to prevent the exhaustion of resources in any given place. While an Indian band or tribe held rights to a large domain, only small sections of this land were settled, planted on, or otherwise developed; large tracts of forest were preserved for hunting and gathering. From the European perspective, this indicated that the Indians were squandering their resources. Francis Higginson wrote,

The Indians are not able to make use of the one fourth
part of the Land, neither have they any settled places,
as Townes to dwell in, nor any ground as they
challenge for their owne possession, but change their
habitation from place to place.

As we round another bend, the bank grows high and flat. A wide, open field, with woods nearby and easy access to the water, this would have been the ideal place for an Indian village. In the years preceding European settlement, the Wampanoag tribe of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts numbered between 21,000 and 24,000. On the northern banks of Herring Brook, further upstream in Pembroke, lies the site of one of their many hunting and fishing camps. It is likely that other such camps were established at various points along the North and its tributaries.

Learning the techniques of gathering, hunting and producing food year-round, the native population of this region grew strong and well adapted to the rhythms of the environment. They dwelled in dome-shaped wigwams, covered with skins or matting, depending on the time of year. Seasonal schedules for gathering wild plants, nuts, seeds, and berries were strictly adhered to, and fishing, hunting, and agricultural camps were established regularly.

In the spring and fall, fish were a prime source of nourishment; the Wampanoag knew not only when it was best to visit certain shallows, creeks or streams, but also which bait to use and what to expect to catch. They used a wide range of equipment, from weirs, spears, and nets, to lines of twisted plant fiber tied to bone hooks.

The winter camp, an inland village of longhouses, was an ideal place to work on crafts. Bowls, fishhooks, arrow shafts, and tool handles were carved from wood; dugout canoes were also constructed, some up to fifty feet in length. Women made and repaired clothing, and wove baskets and mats.

The Wampanoag began assembling their agricultural camps in the early spring. As soon as the ground thawed, they cleared their oceanside fields to make them ready for planting. Between March and June, women sowed several different seeds in mounds of packed soil; they used large shells for shovels, as well as stone digging sticks and spades. These crops -- including several types of corn, beans, and squash-- grew together, strengthening each other against the effects of wind and predators. Tobacco, cultivated only by men, was grown separately. Shellfishing was also carried out from these camps; much of the oyster, soft-shell clam, quahog, and mussel harvest was preserved for later use.

The agricultural harvest came in September; boiled, dried, or stored in sacks underground, the majority of the crops were put aside for winter. September also marked the start of the hunting season; techniques included stalking and shooting, driving, and the use of snares and traps. While men hunted the game -- primarily deer, fox, rabbit, and raccoon -- women brought the carcasses back to camp, where they butchered and processed the meat, saving bones and hides for use as tools and clothing. Waterfowl such as duck, goose, crane and cormorant were also pursued.

With summer not far behind, the reeds tower over us as we glide along; not yet toppled decay or crushed by snow, they sway in the breeze, bending down as if to enclose us, to fold us into the embrace of the river. Some sections of North are characterized as having experienced little change in the past four centuries; with nothing to see but marshland, nothing to hear but the music of nature, no signs of ‘progress’ or pollution, this stretch of the river must be one of them.

I am an explorer out here; a voyageur. I have exchanged my birch bark canoe for a yellow and green rubber raft; instead of furs and skins, I wear polyfleece and Gore-tex. The pioneer spirit courses through me; my frontier is the past -- while this isn’t virgin territory, I experience it as new. By being here on this river, by imagining this world as it existed hundreds or thousands of years ago, I am bringing the past into the present; while I lack the ability to fully understand this other world, I am capable, at least, of making the remote tangible. I may have caught only a fleeting glimpse, but I have opened my eyes.

While today there are no Wampanoag settlements in the North River region, the tribe is far from extinct. Greatly reduced in number by epidemic diseases and driven from their lands by the spread of European colonization, the Wampanoag were forced to retreat to their settlements on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. However, in the 1920’s, inspired by the national Pan-Indian movement, the Wampanoag Nation was founded, gathering Indians from Mashpee, Gay Head, and Herring Pond to elect new tribal leaders.

Although reunited as a tribe, the Wampanoag lived and worked in the non-Indian community. Raised in such a world, would their children and grandchildren maintain of a sense of their cultural heritage? While the first few decades of twentieth century saw the reinstatement of tribal government and the resumption of customary dances and ceremonies, not much was done to preserve the tribe’s oral traditions. In the 1950’s and 60’s however, the Mashpee began to organize classes for the young members of the tribe. Taught by the elders, this program encouraged the generational transfer of Wampanoag history and folklore, and led to a renewal of tribal identity.

Thus empowered, while maintaining their own political system under the leadership of the grand sachem and tribal council, the Wampanoag soon gained a voice in the state and national governments; this voice helped to promote their rights as a tribe. In 1987, the Gay Head Indians won an appeal that granted them federal recognition as a “trust status tribe,” and guaranteed health and education benefits as well as financial support. The Mashpee are currently working on a similar appeal.

Today, the Wampanoag gather several times a year for traditional festivals and rituals, and maintain their native crafts of jewelry and basket making. Living in a non-Indian world, they have kept their native traditions alive.

A change of scenery, if only for a moment, can lend tremendous perspective. This journey into a world gone by has been a retreat for me, a break from the schedules and situations of life in modern civilization. I emerge, my energy renewed.

As we round a final bend, the tranquil environment of the river at night is abruptly disturbed: traffic. A hum deepens to a roar as we approach Route 139 and our intended stopping point. Our destination within sight, I know that my own journey has come to an end. While I can visit the past, I cannot stay there; while I can learn from my ancestors, from their history and the stories that they pass down, like the Wampanoag, I must accept the challenges that living in the present offers me.

At the landing, a narrow jut of land at the edge of the woods, my companions each step out of the raft, arriving successfully on dry land. With no one left to anchor the raft, my departure will be more difficult. Gripping an oarlock, I plant one foot on what appears to be solid bank. As the half-frozen mud gives way under the weight of my body, I lose my footing and fall to my knees, still holding onto the raft. Laughing, I accept my companions’ help, and they pull both me and the boat out of the mud.

Later, after a warm shower and a change of clothes, I will put this night on the river behind me. But like the mud that has become wedged into the cracks and crevices of my boots, this experience will stick with me.